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HENRY  WARD  BEECHER 
As  His  Friends  Saw  Him 


B39l7h 


I 


BX  7260  .B3  H4 


Henry  Ward  Beecher  as  his 
friends  saw  him 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2009  witii  funding  from 

Princeton  Tlieological  Seminary  Library 


littp://www.arcliive.org/details/lienrywardbeecliOObost 


HENRY  WARD   BEECHER 
AS  HIS  FRIENDS  SAW  HIM 


NEW   YORK 


XTbe  pilorim  press 

BOSTON 


CHICAGO 


Copyright,  1904 
5y  J.  H.  Tewksbury 


Presswork  by  H.  M.  Plimpton  &  Co.,  Norwood,  Mass. 


A    FOREWORD 

We  have  gathered  into  these  pages  views  of  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  by  men  who  lived  in  the  atmosphere  of  Plymouth 
Church  as  he  created  it  and  as  it  has  survived  him,  such 
men  as  Lyman  Abbott  and  Rossiter  W.  Raymond ;  by  men 
whose  genius  has  received  shape  and  direction  at  his  hands, 
such  as  Gunsaulus  and  Hillis ;  by  men  who  felt  the  impulse 
of  his  power  over  their  childhood  and  youth,  such  as 
Edward  Bok  and  R.  D.  Mallary ;  by  men  who  have  felt 
the  breath  of  his  inspiration  in  other  lands  and  through  his 
books,  such  as  W.  J.  Dawson  and  A.  B.  Penniman ;  and 
by  those  who  have  known  and  loved  him  in  their  various 
spheres  of  service,  such  as  Julia  Ward  Howe,  Amory  H. 
Bradford  and  John   R.   Howard. 

The  time  in  which  this  service  could  be  done  as  it  is 
done  here  is  swiftly  passing  away.  Year  by  year  the  circle 
is  narrowed  of  those  who  knew  Mr.  Beecher  intimately. 
Already  a  generation  has  reached  middle  life  to  whom  he 
is  known,  if  at  all,  only  as  a  genius  of  a  former  period  of 
our  history  now  separated  by  much  more  than  the  mark 
which  divides  the  nineteenth  century  from  present  affairs. 
The  composite  picture  here  given  is  in  a  sense  new,  for  we 
believe  it  is  the  first  collection  which  has  been  made  of  the 
carefully  recorded  impressions  of  so  many  of  his  personal 
friends,  disciples  and  admirers.  It  is  not  Ukely  that  such 
a  collection  will  again  be  attempted.  With  thousands  who 
acknowledge  a  great  debt  to  Mr.  Beecher  we  are  grateful 
to  those  who  have  made  it  possible  for  us  thus  to  bring  him 
again  before  us,  in  his  preparation  for  his  life-work,  in  his 
pulpit,  on   the   platform,  at  his  study  desk,  in   the   homes 

3 


4  mcm\>  "WaarJ)  JBeecber 

where  he  loved  to  visit,  in  his  journeys  to  other  lands,  in 
the  circle  of  his  intimate  friends,  and  in  his  solicitous  care 
for  young  men. 

The  indescribable  power  of  his  oratory  can  be  appre- 
hended only  by  those  who  have  heard  it.  In  childhood  and 
manhood  we,  listening  to  him,  have  felt  the  electric  thrill 
passing  through  crowded  audiences  as  they  responded  to 
the  spontaneous  outflow  of  his  great  mind  and  heart  keyed 
to  such  exquisite  harmony  of  human  sympathy  that  voice 
and  words  and  action  and  thought  made  a  grand  diapason 
which  seemed  to  gather  spirit,  mind  and  body  up  into  an 
elysium  of  exultant  faith  and  courage.  The  power  of 
Mr.  Beecher's  personality  cannot  be  reproduced. 

But  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  find  that  after  the  personality 
has  become  only  a  fading  memory,  Mr.  Beecher  abides  with 
us  as  a  prophet  of  the  first  order,  whose  insight  into  truth 
is  more  clearly  recognized  now  than  when  he  was  living. 
His  wisdom  has  survived  his  personal  magnetism,  and  the 
generation  which  succeeds  his  accepts  what  he  taught  with 
greater  confidence  than  the  generation  which  heard  him. 
He  thought  it  advisable  to  withdraw  as  a  minister  from 
official  fellowship  with  his  brethren  in  order  that  they 
might  not  bear  the  responsibility  for  what  he  said.  But 
the  Beecher  of  twenty  years  ago  would  be  received  into  full 
fellowship  to-day  with  little  question  and  abundant  honor. 

The  twenty-nine  names  inscribed  in  our  National  Hall 
of  Fame  include  three  clergymen,  all  Congregationalists. 
Their  widely  diverging  teachings  and  types  may,  we  trust, 
prophesy  as  varied  service  of  our  historic  denomination  in 
the  future  as  it  has  rendered  in  the  past.  Jonathan  Edwards, 
William  Ellery  Channing,  and  Henry  Ward  Beecher  were  as 
far  apart  in  theology  as  the  East  is  from  the  West.  But 
in  their  insight  into  the  character  of  God  and  experience 
of  personal  communion  with  him  they  stand  close  to  one 
another.     In  sympathy  with  men  and  in  interpreting  to  them 


a  foreword  5 

God,  whom  he  beheld  and  knew,  the  greatest  of  these  three 
was  Beecher. 

The  pictures  presented  are  not  less  notable  than   the 
contributors.     Never  has  there  been  such  a  complete  photo- 
graphic reproduction  of  Mr.  Beecher  himself  and  of  persons 
and  places  associated  with  him.     The  first  portrait  is  said 
to  be  the  last  one  of  Mr.  Beecher,  taken  by  Elliot  and  Frye, 
in  London,  in  1886.     The  photographer  stopped  Mr.  Beecher 
as  he  and  Major  Pond  were  going  out  of  the  gallery,  saying: 
"Stop  right   where  you  are,  Mr.  Beecher.     Don't  move  a 
muscle."     It  was  issued  for  the  first  time   in   this  country 
in   the  volume  entitled,    "Best    Thoughts  of   Henry  Ward 
Beecher,"  published  by  H.  S.  Goodspeed,  of  New  York,  to 
whom  we  are  indebted  for  the  opportunity  of  reproducing 
it.     The  photograph  on  page  i  o,  by  Rockwood,  of  New  York, 
is  also  a  late  one,  and  appears  as  the  frontispiece  in  Lyman 
Abbott's  biography  of  Beecher,  recently  issued  by  Houghton, 
Mififlin  and  Company.     Earlier  pictures  of  Mr.  Beecher  have 
been  gathered  from  many  sources,  and  we  are  particularly 
indebted  to  Mrs.  Frances  L.  Pratt,  of  Brooklyn,  a  long-time 
member  of   Plymouth  Church,  for  suggestions  and  for  the 
loan  of  rare  photographs. 


SALIENT    DATES    IN    BEECHER'S    LIFE 

1 8 13,  June  24.  Henry  Ward  Beecher  born  in  Litchfield, 
Connecticut. 

1834.     Graduated  from  Amherst  College. 

1837,  Graduated  from  Lane  Theological  Seminary, 
Cincinnati,  Ohio. 

1838,  November  9.  Ordained  at  Presbyterian  church, 
Lawrenceburg,  Indiana,  having  supplied  the  church  from 
May,   1837. 

1839,  July  31.     Installed  at  Indianapolis,  Indiana. 
1847,  September  19.     Dismissed  from  Indianapolis. 
1847,    October    10.       Installed    at     Plymouth    Church, 

Brooklyn,  New  York. 

1878-1887.  Chaplain  of  the  Thirteenth  New  York 
Regiment. 

1887,  March  8.      Died  at  Brooklyn,  New  York. 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS 

Estimates  of  Beecher 

As  a  Citizen,  by  Rev.  Lyman  Abbott,  D.D 1 1 

Ruling  Ideas  of  his  Sermons,  by  Rev.  Newell  Dwight  Hillis,  D.D.  23 

As  an  Orator,  by  Rev.  Frank  W.  Gunsaulus,  D.D 37 

An  English  Estimate,  by  Rev.  W.  J.  Dawson,  D.D 47 

As  Author  and  Editor,  by  John  R.  Howard 57 

His  Contribution  to  Literature,  by  Rev.  Alford  B.  Penniman  .     .  71 

Abridged  Bibliography 75 

Incidents  and  Personal  Memories 

Mr.  Beecher  in  Private  Life,  by  Rossiter  W.  Raymond  ....  81 
The  Henry  Ward  Beecher  of  My  Childhood,  by  Rev.  R.  DeW. 

Mallary 91 

Undergraduate  Days,  by  Walter  A.  Dyer 95 

Mr.  Beecher  and  Two  Plymouth  Boys,  by  Edward  Bok  .     .     .     .103 

The  Beecher  Rifles  Church,  by  C.  M.  Harger 105 

Mr.  Beecher's  Yale  Lectures,  by  Prof.  George  P.  Fisher  .  .  .111 
A  Young  Theologue's  Impressions,  by  Rev.  Hugh  Pedley  .  -115 
An  Evening  Hour  at  Beecher's  Home,  by  Rev.  A.  S.  Walker,  D.D.  1 17 
An  Ex-Slave's  Impressions,  by  Maggie  Porter  Cole 120 

Appreciations  of  Mr.  Beecher  by 

Rev.  Amory  H.  Bradford,  D.D 125 

Fred  W.  Hinrichs 127 

George  W.  Cable 130 

Oliver  Otis  Howard 131 

John  White  Chadwick 131 

Julia  Ward  Howe 133 

George  William  Curtis 135 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 135 


\[b^ 


Church  in  Indianapolis  in  luhich  J\f>-.  BcccJicr  preached 


Church  in  La7urencehirg,   Tnd.,  7vhere  Mr.  Beecher  first  preached 


ESTIMATES 
OF    BEECHER 


From  a  photof^raph  by  Rockivood.     Believed  to  be  his  latest  portrait 


HENRY  WARD    BEECHER  AS  A  CITIZEN 

By  Rev.  Lyman  Abbott,  D.D. 

Henry  Ward  Beecher  was  primarily  a  preacher 
of  the  gospel.  He  reiteratedly  declared  that  his  pur- 
pose in  life  was  to  bring  men  to  a  knowledge  of  God 
and  a  likeness  with  God,  through  Jesus  Christ,  the 
Saviour  of  men.  He  was  a  political  reformer  only 
because  he  believed  that  the  gospel  was  social  as  well 
as  individual ;  that  the  object  of  Christ  was  the  recon- 
struction of  society  through  the  reconstruction  of  the 
individual  ;  that  to  preach  the  gospel  meant  to  pro- 
claim the  redemption  of  society,  as  well  as  the  redemp- 
tion of  the  individual,  by  an  application  to  all  social 
as  to  all  individual  problems  of  the  principles  and 
precepts  inculcated   by  Jesus   Christ. 

Mr.  Beecher  is  known  as  a  brilliant  orator,  who 
employed  the  resources  of  wide  reading,  broad  sym- 
pathy with  men,  vivid  imagination  and  a  devout 
emotional  nature,  coupled  with  extraordinary  rhetor- 
ical and  elocutionary  gifts,  in  arousing  the  consciences 
and  the  affections  of  popular  audiences,  and  directing 
them  in  channels  for  the  promotion  of  nobler  living. 
But  the  study  of  his  political  life  shows  also  states- 
manlike qualities :  a  clear  understanding  of  current 
issues,  a  grasp  of  great  political  principles,  and  a 
prophet's  perception  of  the  direction  in  which  lay 
the  way  to  future  peace  and  prosperity.  These  qual- 
ities  are    especially   illustrated    by    his    action    in    the 

11 


12  mcm^  MarD  36eecber 

three  great  epochs  of  the  national  life  in  which  he 
took  a  notable  part  —  the  antislavery  campaign,  the 
Civil  War,  the  reconstruction  period.  Within  the 
limits  of  this  article  I  can  but  hint  at  certain  mani- 
festations of  these  qualities  in  these   several   epochs. 

I.        THE    ANTISLAVERY    CAMPAIGN 

Mr.  Beecher  is  often  called  an  Abolitionist.  If  by 
Abolitionist  is  meant  one  who  desired  the  abolition  of 
slavery,  the  appellation  is  deserved  ;  if  by  Abolitionist 
is  meant  one  who  agreed  with  William  Lloyd  Garrison 
and  Wendell  Phillips,  in  the  program  which  the  former 
kept  at  the  head  of  The  Liberator,  he  was  not  an  Aboli- 
tionist. He  did  not  advocate  "immediate  unconditional 
emancipation"  ;  he  did  not  believe  that  "slaveholders, 
slave-traders  and  slave-drivers  are  to  be  placed  on  the 
same  level  of  infamy  and  in  the  same  fiendish  category 
as  kidnappers  and  manstealers "  ;  he  did  not  believe 
that  "the  existing  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
is  a  covenant  with  death  and  an  agreement  with  hell " ; 
he  did   not  believe  in   •'  no  union  with   slaveholders." 

His  antislavery  principles  had  their  first  clear 
enunciation  in  an  editorial  published  in  The  New 
York  Independent  in  the  winter  of  1850.  The  occa- 
sion of  this  editorial  was  the  compromise  measure 
introduced  into  Congress  in  January  of  that  year  for 
the  settlement  of  the  slave  question  ;  the  principles 
of  the  editorial  were  those  incorporated  in  the  plat- 
form of  the  Republican  party,  six  years  later,  on 
which,  four  years  after  that,  Abraham  Lincoln  was 
elected.  In  this  editorial  Mr.  Beecher  declared,  some 
years  before  Abraham  Lincoln  and  some  weeks  before 


Be  a  ClU3cn  13 

William  H.  Seward,  the  irreconcilable  conflict  between 
slavery  and  liberty,  but  he  declared  also  his  adherence 
to  the  Constitution,  his  loyalty  to  the  Union,  his  belief 
that  slavery  was  to  be  overturned,  not  by  withdrawing 
from  the  Union,  but  by  remaining  in  the  Union  and 
resisting  the  further  extension  of  slavery. 

The  Garrisonian  Abolitionists  were  the  first  seces- 
sionists ;  they  sought  to  dissolve  the  Union  in  the 
interest  of  abolition.  The  Southern  secessionists,  ten 
years  later,  sought  to  dissolve  the  Union  in  the  inter- 
est of  slavery.  Mr.  Beecher  believed  that  the  forces 
in  the  Union  for  liberty  would  prove  stronger  than 
the  forces  for  slavery,  and  to  the  awakening  of  those 
forces  he  addressed  himself  through  the  ten  years  of 
antislavery  campaign — 1850-60. 

It  is  true  that  he  invited  Wendell  Phillips  to  lec- 
ture in  Plymouth  Church  ;  it  is  true  that  he  spoke  on 
the  same  platform  with  William  Lloyd  Garrison.  But 
he  made  it  perfectly  clear  in  speech,  sermon  and  edi- 
torial that  he  believed  that  the  North  shared  with  the 
South  in  responsibility  for  slavery ;  that  it  could  not 
escape  that  responsibility  by  withdrawing  from  the 
Union  ;  that,  despite  some  imperfections,  the  Consti- 
tution was  a  noble  document,  framed  in  the  interest 
of  freedom,  not  of  slavery ;  and  that,  in  the  Union 
and  under  the  Constitution,  slavery  could  be  so  cir- 
cumscribed that  eventually  it  would  die  of  inanition. 
When,  therefore,  John  Brown  attempted  his  disastrous 
raid  into  Virginia,  Mr.  Beecher  was  not  among  those 
who  applauded  him.  "I  protest,"  he  said,  "against 
any  counsels  that  lead  to  insurrection,  servile  war  and 
bloodshed.     It  is  bad  for  the  master  and  bad  for  the 


14  Mem>8  MarD  JBeecbet 

slave,  bad  for  all  that  are  neighbors  to  them,  bad  for 
the  whole  land  —  bad  from  beginnhig  to  end." 

On  the  other  hand,  when  the  experiment  of  "  squat- 
ter sovereignty"  was  instigated  by  Mr.  Douglas,  and 
the  question  whether  Kansas  should  be  a  free  or  a 
slave  state  was  made  dependent  on  the  character  of 
its  population,  Mr.  Beecher  took  an  active  part  in 
promoting  emigration  to  Kansas  of  a  quality  of  citi- 
zens who  would  carry  with  them  a  free  school,  free 
labor,  free  press,  and  so  a  free  constitution.  He  did 
this  at  the  time  when  the  Abolitionists,  with  whom 
public  opinion  has  so  often  associated  him,  were  de- 
nouncing the  Emigrant  Aid  Company  as  "a.  great 
hindrance  to  the  cause  of  freedom  and  a  mighty 
curse  to  the  territory,"  and  maintaining  that  "the 
fate  of  Nebraska  and  Kansas  was  sealed  the  first 
hour  Stephen  Arnold  Douglas  consented  to  play  his 
perfidious  part." 

History  has  so  conclusively  demonstrated  that  the 
Abolitionists  were  wrong  and  the  Kansas  emigrants 
were  right,  that  the  country  has  almost  forgotten  that 
there  was  any  issue  between  the  two  ;  history  has  so 
conclusively  proved  that  if  the  Abolition  secessionists 
could  have  had  their  way  and  induced  the  Northern 
states  to  withdraw  from  the  Union,  they  would  simply 
have  played  into  the  hands  of  those  who  were  endeav- 
oring to  form  a  great  slavocracy,  extending  west  to  the 
Pacific  Ocean  and  south  into  the  Central  American 
States,  that  we  have  almost  forgotten  that  such  a 
policy  was  ever  seriously  urged  upon  the  people  of 
the  North. 


Mr.  Beecher  as  a  young  man 
From  a  fainting  now  ozuned  by  Mrs.    Tenny,  of  Lexington 


16  Menri5  TKAarJ)  ascccber 

II.        THE    CIVIL    WAR 

In  a  similar  fashion  the  nation  has  gladly  forgotten 
the  spirit  of  compromise,  not  to  say  cowardice,  which 
threatened  the  North  after  the  election  of  Mr.  Lincohi ; 
we  have  forgotten  that  time  of  confusion,  contradict- 
ory counsels,  conflicting  currents,  in  which  even  so 
eminent  an  antislavery  man  as  Mr.  Seward  hoped  to 
find  some  way  out  by  compromise,  so  influential  a 
journal  as  The  New  York  Tribune  said  that  "if  the 
Cotton  States  decide  that  they  can  do  better  out  of 
the  Union  than  in  it,  we  insist  on  letting  them  go  in 
peace,"  and  so  clear-headed  and  loyal  a  statesman  as 
Charles  Francis  Adams  advocated  the  summoning  of 
a  conference  and  the  shaping  of  a  compromise  for  the 
purpose  of  preventing  the  Border  States  from  casting 
in  their  lot  with  the  Confederacy. 

In  all  this  time  of  confusion  and  contradiction, 
there  were  two  men  who  never  for  a  moment  lost 
sight  of  the  one  guiding  principle,  that  concession 
should  nevermore  be  made  to  the  slave  power  under 
any  pretext  whatever,  be  the  consequences  what  they 
might.  These  were  the  silent  man  at  Springfield 
and  the  eloquent  man  in  Brooklyn,  neither  of  whom 
for  an  instant  hesitated.  In  his  sermon  preached 
November  29,  i860,  "Against  a  Compromise  of 
Principle,"  Mr.  Beecher  vigorously  condemned  all 
such  concessions.  Speaking,  as  to  the  South,  from 
his  pulpit,  he  said  :  — 

You  shall  have  the  Constitution  intact,  and  its  full 
benefit.  The  full  might  and  power  of  public  sentiment  in 
the  North  shall  guarantee  to  you  everything  that  history 
and  the  Constitution  give  you.     But  if  you  ask  us  to  aug- 


2ls  a  C(t(3en  17 

ment  the  area  of  slavery,  to  cooperate  with  you  in  curs- 
ing new  territory ;  if  you  ask  us  to  make  the  air  of  the 
North  favorable  for  a  slave  to  breathe,  we  will  not  do  it. 
We  love  liberty  as  much  as  you  love  slavery,  and  we  shall 
stand  by  our  rights  with  all  the  vigor  with  which  we  mean 
to  stand  by  justice  toward  you. 

These  words  sound  like  commonplaces  now,  but 
they  were  uttered  when  Northern  pulpits  and  Northern 
presses  were  clamoring  for  some  impossible  compro- 
mise, when  Congress  was  debating  half-way  measures, 
when  timid  men  were  endeavoring  to  contrive  some 
platform  of  concession  to  slavery  and  secession  that 
would  postpone  the  inevitable  conflict,  when  the  radi- 
cal Abolitionists  were  advising  to  let  the  erring  sisters 
depart  in  peace.  Of  his  eloquence  in  the  later  epoch, 
stirring  the  heart  and  sustaining  the  courage  of  the 
North,  undaunted  under  disaster  and  defeat,  I  need 
not  speak  here,  for  I  am  speaking  of  Mr.  Beecher's 
wisdom  as  a  counselor,  not  of  his  eloquence  as  an 
orator. 

For  the  same  reason  I  need  not  speak  of  those 
marvelous  addresses  in  England,  which  contributed 
so  largely  to  prevent  English  interference  and  did  so 
much  both  to  arouse  and  to  express  the  public  senti- 
ment of  the  common  and  unrepresented  workingmen 
of  England,  and  so  much  to  prepare  the  way  for  that 
unofficial  Anglo-American  alliance  which  has  grown 
up  within  the  last  few  years,  to  the  satisfaction  of 
all  right-thinking  men  on  both  sides  of  the  water. 

III.       THE    PERIOD    OF    RECONSTRUCTION 

In  the  third  epoch,  that  of  reconstruction,  Mr. 
Beecher  exhibited  the  same  prophetic  and  statesman- 
like   quality.      The    problem    of    reconstruction,  as    it 


18  ?Henrg  mar&  3i6eecber 

presented  itself  to  the  people  of  the  North  at  the 
close  of  the  Civil  War,  was  a  very  difficult  and  per- 
plexing one.  It  is  not  strange  that  the  best  minds 
differed  respecting  the  best  method  of  its  solution ; 
even  to-day  men  are  not  agreed  what  course  should 
have  been  pursued.  That  great  evils  grew  out  of  the 
course  that  was  pursued  does  not  prove  that  it  might 
not  have  been  the  best.  The  nation  was  like  a  man 
in  the  middle  of  a  swamp  ;  turn  which  way  he  will 
he  cannot  get  out  without  muddy  and  perhaps  torn 
clothes,  perhaps  scratched  and  bleeding  face  and  hands. 
But  the  fundamental  principles  which  Mr.  Beecher  laid 
down  seem  clearer  now  in  the  light  of  history  than 
they  did  when  he  first  propounded  them. 

While  still  the  question  was  open  in  the  country 
whether  the  war  for  secession  should  be  regarded  as 
anything  else  than  gigantic  acts  of  mob  violence, 
which  left  the  states  unimpaired  to  return  under  their 
old  constitutions  when  the  mob  had  been  quelled,  he 
took  in  his  Fort  Sumter  address  the  ground  that  the 
United  States  are  one  and  indivisible,  that  the  states 
are  not  absolute  sovereigns,  that  liberty  is  indispensa- 
ble to  republican  government,  and  that  slavery  must 
be  utterly  and  forever  abolished. 

These  principles  will  seem  to  Northern  readers  al- 
phabetic, but  not  so  alphabetic  as  some  other  principles 
which  he  laid  down  almost  simultaneously:  that  the 
North  should  do  nothing  to  impair  the  self-respect  of 
the  South  ;  that  it  should  not  demand  conversion  from 
secession  as  a  matter  of  political  opinion,  but  only 
consent  that  secession  is  forever  disallowed  as  matter 
of   practical   result  ;   that    it    should    not    wait   for  any 


20  Menr^  'WHar&  JBeecbcr 

further  guarantees  for  the  future,  the  utter  destruction 
of  slavery  being  all  the  guarantee  necessary ;  that  the 
negro  should  have  all  civil  rights,  but  as  to  suffrage, 
that  might  be  confined  to  a  few,  as,  for  example,  to 
"those  colored  men  who  bore  arms  in  our  late  war 
for  the  salvation  of  this  Government "  ;  that  universal 
suffrage  might  well  wait  upon  the  processes  of  educa- 
tion ;  that  the  South  should  not  be  treated  as  a  pagan 
land  to  which  missionaries  must  be  sent,  but  as  part  of 
a  common  country  to  which  aid  must  be  sent  by  the 
richer  and  more  prosperous  section  ;  that  in  all  philan- 
thropic and  educational  work  in  the  South  "our  heart 
should  be  set  toward  our  country  and  all  its  people 
without  distinction  of  caste,  class,  or  color." 

The  maintenance  of  these  principles  then  subjected 
Mr.  Beecher  to  suspicion  and  rancor  in  the  North,  just 
as  he  had  been  subjected  to  suspicion  and  rancor  by 
his  vigorous  antislavery  sentiments  ten  years  before. 
Even  to-day  a  radical  remnant  condemns  the  same 
sentiments,  now  grown  more  widespread  and  popular. 
To  me  it  appears  that  his  counsels  were  as  wise  as  his 
spirit  was  fraternal,  and  that  in  the  period  of  recon- 
struction he  showed  the  spirit  of  a  statesman  as  truly 
as  in  the  period  which  preceded  he  showed  the  spirit 
of  a  prophet  and  a  reformer. 

Mr.  Beecher's  greatness  conceals  his  greatness. 
His  wit  and  humor,  his  imagination,  his  emotional 
power,  dazzle  and  sway  men.  While  they  are  under 
the  charm  of  his  personality  they  do  not  stop  to  con- 
sider whither  he  is  carrying  them  ;  when  they  look 
back  they  do  not  know  who  has  carried  them,  and  so 
unconscious  has  been  the  transference  that  often  they 


B0  a  Citisen  21 

are  unaware  that  it  has  even  taken  place.  But  I 
believe  that  if  the  speeches  of  Mr.  Beecher  could  be 
denuded  of  the  elements  which  made  them  powerful 
as  orations,  if  the  great  fundamental  political  princi- 
ples which  they  embody  could  be  epitomized  in  these 
as  unemotive  and  unimaginative  as  those  of  Martin 
Luther,  they  would  show  that  their  author  possessed 
statesmanlike  qualities  which  give  him  rank  among  the 
eminent  political  counselors  and  leaders  of  the  epoch 
in  which  he  lived. 


W^/ 


^S  years  of  a^e.     (^)   Aijo.     (3)  At 


40.     {4)  At  ^o.     (^)  At  6s. 


THE    RULING    IDEAS    OF    HENRY    WARD 

BEECHER'S    SERMONS 

By  Rev.  Newell  Dwight  Hillis,  D.  D. 

Mr.  Beecher  published  approximately  seven  hun- 
dred sermons,  representing  fourteen  out  of  fifty  preach- 
ing years.  He  published  two  volumes  when  he  was 
fifty,  gathering  up  forty-eight  fugitive  sermons  that 
had  been  printed  in  pamphlets  and  newspapers ;  two 
volumes  when  he  was  fifty-two,  sermons  illustrating 
his  various  moods  and  methods.  At  fifty-five  he 
began  to  publish  one  sermon  each  week,  a  publica- 
tion that  was  continued  until  he  was  sixty-two ;  in 
his  seventieth  year  he  founded  The  New  Plymouth 
Pulpit,  and  continued  it  for  two  years ;  at  seventy- 
three  his  sermons  preached  during  his  summer's  visit 
to  England  were  printed ;  and  he  also  left  some 
twenty-five  sermons  published  in  The  Christian  Union 
but  never  put  in  book  form. 

His  output,  therefore,  includes  some  twenty-four 
volumes  of  sermons  —  sermons  biographical,  doctrinal, 
philosophical,  narrative,  imaginative,  and  expositional ; 
sermons  written  sometimes  from  the  viewpoint  of 
reason,  sometimes  from  the  viewpoint  of  persuasion 
and  argument,  sometimes  from  the  viewpoint  of  in- 
spiration and  hope,  but  always  with  the  purpose  of 
convincing  men  of  sin,  persuading  men  from  sin, 
the  development  of  faith  in  God  and  love  for  Christ, 
and  the  building  up  of  a  Christlike  character.      From 

23 


24  Menry  marD  JBcecbec 

twenty-five  to  forty  years  of  age  he  wrote  with  great 
care  one  sermon  a  week.  During  this  time,  he  tells 
us,  he  was  an  apprentice,  learning  his  trade.  Very 
early  he  decided  that  the  only  way  to  learn  how  to 
preach  was  by  preaching.  Having,  therefore,  written 
his  Sunday  morning  sermon  for  his  own  people  in 
Indianapolis,  on  Monday  he  started  out,  and  repeated 
that  sermon  every  night  in  as  many  different  school- 
houses  in  the  country  round  about.  In  1844  he 
preached  once  every  day  for  ten  months  in  rural  dis- 
tricts and  little  villages,  and  a  few  sermons  of  that 
epoch  have  on  the  first  page  the  names  of  from  ten 
to  thirty  schoolhouses  and  churches  where  they  were 
preached. 

At  seventy-three  I  heard  him  say:  "What  if  the 
great  orators  and  lawyers  and  statesmen  were  to  try 
to  learn  to  speak  by  speaking  on  one  day  of  the  week.^ 
What  if  a  great  singer  should  attempt  to  develop  a 
voice  by  singing  one  hour  on  Sunday  and  then  never 
opening  the  mouth  until  the  next  Sunday.''  The  only 
way  for  young  men  to  learn  how  to  preach  is  to  preach. 
I  question  whether  God  himself  could  make  a  preacher 
out  of  a  man  who  opens  his  mouth  one  day  and  then 
keeps  his  mouth  closed  during  the  next  six  days." 
But  Mr.  Beecher  was  not  simply  a  preacher  who  mas- 
tered his  art  by  practising  it ;  he  was  also  a  tireless  and 
accurate  student,  reading  along  the  line  of  the  theme 
on  which  he  was  going  to  preach,  and  he  continued  to 
do  this  until  he  was  about  fifty,  at  which  time  he  had 
accumulated  between  five  and  six  thousand  volumes. 
Contrary  to  the  usual  opinion,  also,  few  men  in  the 
American  pulpit   have   been    better  grounded    in    the- 


/ "  \ 


The  fnan  of  771  any  moods ' 


26  ?Henr\>  "MatO  JBeccbet 

ology,  philosophy  and  the  apologetics  of  his  era.  To 
the  very  end  his  library  was  singularly  rich  in  theology, 
philosophy  and  the  relations  between  the  new  science 
and  religion. 

Until  he  was  thirty  years  of  age  he  was  under  the 
influence  of  his  father,  Lyman  Beecher,  and  his  inter- 
est in  theological  problems  was  kept  at  white  heat 
through  the  discussions  of  his  brothers,  who  were 
preachers.  He  tells  us  that  for  four  years  his  father, 
Professor  Stowe,  his  brother  Edward,  and  the  other 
three  brothers,  not  to  mention  his  sisters,  who  were 
passionately  fond  of  theology,  gathered  around  the 
dinner-table,  and  there  continued,  sometimes  for  two 
and  three  hours,  forgetting  to  eat,  because  they  could 
remember  nothing  but  theology,  the  problems  of  Cal- 
vinism, and  the  discussions  that  were  on  between  the 
Old  and  New  School  Presbyterians.  For  thirty  years 
Mr.  Beecher  breathed  no  air  but  the  air  of  theology. 
Theology  was  the  bread  that  he  ate,  theology  was  the 
water  that  he  drank,  theology  was  the  very  blood  in 
his  veins.  He  tells  us  that  he  knew  the  arguments 
of  the  Puritan  theologians,  like  John  Owen,  of  all  the 
New  England  theologians,  and  of  the  Old  School  the- 
ology taught  at  Princeton  and  the  New  School  of  Cal- 
vinism taught  in  Lane  —  knew  them  so  that  he  could 
recite  them  forward  and  backward.  He  could  play 
with  the  arguments  as  a  juggler  keeps  nine  balls  in 
the  air. 

In  1875  a  friend  spoke  to  him  about  a  certain 
preacher  who  prided  himself  on  his  theological  posi- 
tions, and  had  said  that  Mr.  Beecher  knew  nothing 
about  theology.     Mr.  Beecher  replied,  "  When  he  has 


IRultng  IFDeas  of  Mie  Sermons  27 

preached  theology  for  twenty  years,  as  once  I  did,  he 
will  through  preaching  master  it,  instead  of  being  mas- 
tered by  his  knowledge,  as  a  big  pile  of  green  wood 
masters  the  fire  that  smolders  beneath."  The  fact  is, 
Mr.  Beecher  rejected  the  theology  of  his  era,  not  be- 
cause he  knew  so  little  about  theology,  but  because  he 
knew  so  much  about  it.  After  fifty-five  he  ceased  to 
read  closely,  turned  all  his  theological  and  philosophical 
books  over  to  his  brother  Edward,  went  to  Dr.  Rossiter 
W.  Raymond  for  a  condensed  statement  of  what  was 
going  on  in  the  realm  of  science  and  philosophy,  asked 
his  old  friend,  Thomas  G.  Shearman,  to  do  his  eco- 
nomic reading  for  him,  and  during  the  last  fifteen 
years  of  his  life  read  but  few  books,  and  these  very 
slowly.  He  left  ten  thousand  volumes,  and  multitudes 
of  them  never  had  more  than  the  first  fifty  leaves  cut. 
But  he  was  not  under  the  delusion  that  most  of  us  are 
under  —  that  a  man  has  read  a  book  because  he  owns  it. 
Some  years  ago  I  analyzed  Mr.  Beecher's  published 
sermons,  and  recently  I  have  gone  through  a  large 
number  of  his  manuscripts,  representing  the  earlier 
period  of  his  ministry.  I  find  that  once  in  three  years 
he  made  the  round  of  Christian  truth  and  experience, 
preaching  on  the  great  epochs  of  the  spiritual  life,  and 
on  the  great  themes,  the  Scriptures,  God,  Christ,  the 
Holy  Spirit,  man,  his  dignity,  his  need,  his  ignorance 
and  sinfulness,  the  nature  and  number  and  order  of 
the  spiritual  faculties,  the  method  of  quickening  in 
men  a  sense  of  sin,  the  nurture  of  faith,  the  devel- 
opment of  love,  the  feeding  the  hope  of  the  life  of 
man.  But  if  the  themes  were  many,  the  ideas  that 
controlled  them  were  few.     No  matter  what  the  sub- 


28  Wenr^  imarD  3Beccber 

ject  of  the  sermon  is,  during  the  last  thirty  years  of 
his  preaching  four  great  thoughts  dwell  in  every  ser- 
mon, as  if  he  had  squeezed  four  clusters  of  grapes, 
that  the  purple  flood  might  run  down  through  all  his 
statements. 

The  first  ruling  idea  is  his  conception  of  the  suffer- 
ing God.  For  him,  God  is  no  "  sheaf  of  thunder- 
storms." God  loves,  he  pities,  he  recovers,  he  sym- 
pathizes, he  suffers.  The  very  heart  of  his  message 
is  that  God  neither  slumbers  nor  sleeps,  by  reason  of 
the  emotions  of  love  that  suffer  and  make  him  the 
burden-bearer  of  all  his  children.  As  Paul  met  his 
Master  on  the  way  to  Damascus  ;  as  Luther,  climbing 
the  steps  of  the  church  in  Rome,  received  the  revela- 
tion that  he  could  enter  immediately  into  the  presence 
of  God  and  be  saved,  so  Mr.  Beecher,  kneeling  in  the 
edge  of  the  forest  in  Indiana,  discovered  in  his  vision 
hour  the  suffering  love  of  God.  For  the  next  forty 
years  that  was  his  one  message,  and  with  ever-increas- 
ing joy  he  preached  it  to  the  very  last  hour  of  his 
life.  From  the  old  pagan  notion  that  was  still  taught 
when  I  was  in  the  seminary,  that  God  was  not  sus- 
ceptible to  pain,  that  God  dwells  at  a  far  remove  from 
this  earth,  impassive  and  with  marble  heart,  that  God 
is  eternally  young  and  eternally  happy,  lifted  up  above 
all  possibility  of  tears,  or  anxiety,  or  solicitude  —  from 
all  these  Grecian  and  heathen  and  former  ultra-Presby- 
terian and  medieval  conceptions  he  utterly  revolted. 

Denying  that  God  suffers  through  any  weakness 
or  sin  of  his  own,  as  man  suffers,  Mr.  Beecher  believed 
that  God,  as  a  Father,  takes  upon  himself  the  sorrows, 
sufferimrs  and   sins   of    his   children.      Because   he  is 


IRullng  IFOeas  of  Mis  Sermons  29 

a  Father,  because  nothing  that  concerns  his  children 
is  foreign  to  him,  he  suffers  with  his  children's  sor- 
rows, and  sympathizes  in  their  griefs,  and  pities  those 
who  fear  him.  Jesus  was  filled  with  compassion  when 
he  saw  the  publican,  the  prodigal  and  sinner.  His 
whole  being  went  out  in  tides  of  sympathy  toward 
those  who  through  error  or  sin  had  blotted  out  all  the 
hopes  and  prophecies  of  their  youth  ;  and  if  Christ 
suffered  with  men  through  thirty  years,  God  suffers 
through  all  the  ages  and  for  all  the  multitudes.  Look- 
ing out  upon  the  great  pilgrim  band  journeying  across 
the  desert,  and  blundering  as  they  journeyed,  a  band 
struggling,  wandering  from  the  way,  oft  falling  in  the 
desert,  full  oft  stricken  down  by  the  beasts  of  passion, 
sometimes  left  weltering  in  their  own  blood,  it  seemed 
to  Mr.  Beecher  impossible  for  any  Christian  man  to 
believe  that  God  from  his  throne  in  the  sky  beheld 
this  pilgrim  host  with  any  save  emotions  of  sympathy 
and  sorrow  and  suffering  and  medicinal  love. 

About  1870  the  scientists  began  to  name  God 
force,  and  explained  the  universe  by  spelling  force 
with  a  capital  **F."  They  made  God  control  the 
world  through  tides  and  rivers  and  winds,  so  that  he 
had  no  more  personal  relation  to  his  universe  than 
the  mill  stream  has  to  the  wheel  that  grinds  the  flour. 
Others  represented  God  as  a  kind  of  householder,  who 
built  a  house,  cared  for  the  roof,  saw  that  it  was  well 
lighted  through  the  windows,  well  provisioned  as  to 
root  cellar  and  pantry,  but  who  never  permitted  any 
one  of  his  children  living  in  the  house  to  know  the 
Father,  and  himself  had  no  interest  in  the  welfare  of 
his  children.     Over  against  these  views  Mr.  Beecher 


30  IHenrg  marO  JBeecbcr 

unveiled  God  as  the  God  of  suffering  love,  whose 
solicitude  for  his  children  burns  day  and  night ;  God 
who  cares  for  all  created  things,  who  loves  birds,  and 
cares   for  the   insect    in   the   grass,  who   loves   things 


Dr.  Lyman  Beecher,  H.  IV.  Beecher  atid  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe 

empty  and  crude,  things  unlovely  and  seminal,  who 
loves  men  who  are  unlovely  and  ignorant  and  sinful, 
and  who  loves,  expecting  nothing  in  return.  This 
all-suffering  and  all-helpful  God  is  abroad  upon  a  mis- 
sion of   recovery.     As   the   suffering  God,  he  has  set 


IRulfng  IfDcas  ot  Mie  Sermons  31 

before  himself  the  task  of  bringing  the  lowest  and 
weakest  and  worst  from  littleness  to  largeness,  from 
ignorance  to  wisdom,  from  crudeness  and  hate  to 
ripeness  and  love.  The  image  of  his  impartial,  all- 
including,  disinterested  love  is  the  sun  that  shines 
for  the  evil  and  the  good.  To  the  last,  the  sun  was 
Mr.  Beecher's  favorite  image  of  the  great  suffering 
God,  whose  mighty  and  majestic  heart  pulsates  through 
all  the  universe  the  tides  of  his  all-cleansing,  all- 
medicinal,  all-forgiving  and  all-healing  love.  In  scores 
of  sermons  Mr.  Beecher  never  mentions  this  thought 
of  the  suffering  God,  and  yet,  no  matter  what  the 
theme  is,  this  thought  dwells  within  and  above  the 
sermon,  as  the  sky  overarches  the  meadows  and 
orchards   with    their  various    grains    and   fruits. 

The  second  ruling  idea  of  Mr.  Beecher  was  his 
conception  of  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ.  Here  he 
was  an  open  and  self-confessed  heretic.  In  the  strict- 
est sense  he  was  Sabellian.  He  did  not  believe  that 
Christ  had  a  human  intellect  or  a  human  will.  He 
believed  that  that  sacred  and  divine  form  that  walked 
over  the  hills  of  Palestine  was  the  luminous  point 
where  God,  the  creator  and  sustainer  of  the  universe, 
manifested  himself.  He  does  indeed  manifest  himself 
through  storms  that  reveal  his  omnipotence,  through 
harvests  that  reveal  his  goodness,  but  he  also  reveals 
his  love  and  suffering  heart  in  that  human  face — the 
face  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  was  this  conception  of  Jesus 
that  in  turn  gave  him  his  conception  of  God  as  the 
suffering  God  of  love. 

Out  of  this  conception,  also,  grew  his  sermon  on 
the  Trinity,   in  which    he  argued   against   the  unitary 


32  IHcnrs  "WnarO  Mcccbcx 

God,  and  proclaimed  the  social  nature  of  God,  and 
spoke  of  the  assembling  of  faculties  and  affections,  as 
many  organs  are  assembled  in  one  body,  and  many 
faculties  in  one  mind.  The  Jesus  that  he  preached 
was  to  him  the  God  that  he  loved.  In  the  same 
prayer,  therefore,  he  addresses  Jesus  and  God,  his 
Father.  His  one  passion  was  this  passion  for  Jesus 
Christ.  No  one  who  ever  heard  Mr.  Beecher  pray 
in  the  closing  years  of  his  life  but  was  impressed  with 
the  way  in  which  he  pronounced  the  words  "Jesus" 
and  "Christ" — for  him  they  were  love-words,  per- 
fumed with  the  most  sacred  memories.  This  concep- 
tion of  Jesus  colored  all  his  sermons,  even  when  he 
did  not  refer  to  it,  and  was  stamped  upon  even  his 
philosophical  discussions  and  national  themes,  as  the 
king's  image  is  stamped  upon  gold. 

Two  other  ideas  ruled,  permeated  and  colored 
Mr.  Beecher's  sermons,  and  once  a  man  has  found 
out  what  they  are  he  has  the  key  that,  with  the  other 
two  words,  unlocks  all  the  mystery  of  his  discourses ; 
these  two  words  are  the  sanctity  of  the  individual  and 
the  certainty  of  the  soul's  immortality.  Mr.  Beecher 
held  that  he  was  to  give  an  account  unto  God  for  him- 
self. Therefore  he  stood  on  his  own  feet,  thought  his 
own  thoughts,  reached  his  own  conclusions  and  pub- 
lished them.  But  he  insisted  just  as  earnestly  upon 
the  sacred  rights  of  others.  The  one  striking  charac- 
teristic of  Plymouth  Church  is  the  outstanding  strength 
of  its  individual  men.  I  can  tell  a  Beecher-grown  man 
as  I  can  tell  a  pasture-grown  oak.  Nothing  pleased 
Mr.  Beecher  more  than  to  have  his  men  stand  up  in 
the    Friday  evening    meeting  and    combat    him.     He 


Ply7ii07ith   C/ii/rc/t,  Broo/c/yn 


^  Menrg  MarD  36cccbcr 

found  therein  the  proof  of  his  ministry.  For  that 
reason  he  fed  the  life  of  the  church  spiritually,  but 
he  would  not  choose  its  officials.  He  insisted  that 
the  spiritual  life  of  the  church  should  express  itself 
by  governing  itself.  His  favorite  sentence  was  that 
"the  poorest  government  of  a  church  that  is  self- 
government  is  better  than  the  best  government  that 
I  as  pastor  impose  upon  them." 

But  to  this  overruling  idea  of  the  sacredness  of 
the  individual  we  must  add  Mr.  Beecher's  idea  of 
man's  immortality.  Looking  out  upon  his  vast  con- 
gregation that  crowded  aisles  and  walls,  to  the 
number  of  nearly  three  thousand,  he  saw  them  all 
clothed,  not  simply  with  imperfection  and  knowledge, 
with  mingled  passions  and  virtues,  with  hopes  and 
fears  and  loves,  not  simply  as  pilgrims  famished  and 
hungry,  but  he  also  saw  them  as  the  children  of  God, 
big  with  destiny  and  immortality.  This  thought  of 
the  immortal  life  filled  him  with  solemnity.  It  lent 
exhilaration  to  his  reason.  It  fell  like  golden  sun- 
light upon  the  heads  of  his  congregation.  It  seemed 
like  the  wistful  smile  of  God.  It  overflowed  his  eyes 
with  tears  and  his  heart  with  s}mpathy.  It  filled  his 
words  with  the  sweetness  of  love.  He  saw  that  im- 
mortal life  overarching  men  as  the  sky  overhangs  the 
flowers,  filling  them  with  rain  and  dew.  For  him 
what  value  did  this  lend  to  man's  soul !  What  im- 
portance did  it  lend  to  his  sermon  !  Indeed,  the  hour 
and  the  sermon,  in  view  of  this  immortal  life,  seemed 
for  the  time  to  Mr.  Beecher  the  only  things  worth 
while.  Among  his  hundreds  of  sermons,  therefore, 
with  their  many  messages  and  their  diverse  meanings. 


IRullng  IFDcas  of  Mis  Sermons  35 

there  are  four  all-controlling  ideas  —  the  suffering  love 
of  God,  the  divine  Christ,  the  sacredness  of  the  indi- 
vidual soul,  and  the  certainty  of  the  life  immortal. 
Having  chosen  his  theme,  Mr.  Beecher  poured  the 
meanings  of  these  four  truths  through  whatsoever 
sermon  in  such  a  way  as  to  "  convince  the  man  of  his 
sin,  to  convert  him  from  his  sin  and  develop  in  him 
the  faith  of  God  and  the  love  of  Christ,  and  build  up 
in  him  a  character  after  Christ's  divine  pattern." 


Henry  Ward  Beecher  and  Harriet  Beechet   Stowe 


HENRY  WARD  BEECHER  AS  AN  ORATOR 
By  Rev.  Frank  W.  Gunsaulus,  D.D. 
No  one  ever  spent  a  day  with  Mr.  Beecher  who 
did  not  discern  the  reason  why  he  was  never  spoken 
of  by  his  acquaintances  as  either  a  silver-  or  golden- 
tongued  orator.  It  is  not  to  disparage  Guthrie  or 
Chrysostom  that  each  bears  one  of  these  appellations ; 
but  it  is  to  indicate  the  wholeness  and  integral  char- 
acter of  Beecher  that  his  eloquence  must  be  spoken 
of  as  an  eflfluence  of  his  entire  nature  rather  than  the 
superb  activity  of  some  particular  power. 

PHYSICAL    BASIS    OF    HIS    ORATORY 

My  study  of  him  as  both  an  organism  and  an  organ 
commenced  shortly  after  I  had  read  a  stimulating  and 
thoughtful  production  on  "The  Physical  Basis  of  Ora- 
tory." In  later  years  I  called  up  the  sagacious  re- 
marks in  that  essay  when  I  saw  Gladstone  under 
nearly  similar  circumstances.  In  both  of  these  cases 
one  was  tempted  to  ask  which  had  the  most  influence 
upon  the  other,  body  or  mind  ?  Certainly,  in  the  full 
glow  of  his  creative  activity  and  its  expression,  each  of 
these  men  could  not  have  appeared  in  more  character- 
istic and  obedient  physical  form,  Mr.  Gladstone's 
body  gave  one  the  conviction  that  there  was  more  of 
character  in  him  vertically;  Mr.  Bcecher's  that  there 
was  more  of  character  in  him  laterally.      Mr.  Beecher 

37 


38  Menrg  mait>  JSeccbcr 

swept  things  with  a  breadth  of  mental  vision  and  con- 
quest before  whose  advance  an  unparalleled  variety 
of  wrongs  went  down  and  an  equal  variety  of  rights 
rejoiced  in  the  fresh  revelation  of  their  strength  ; 
Mr.  Gladstone  illuminated  and  commanded  things  by 
a  height  of  outlook  and  insistence  under  which  every- 
thing base  made  a  deeper  shadow  and  everything 
essentially  true  rose  into  sublimer  proportions.  This, 
indeed,  is  one  of  the  things  which  the  great  orator 
must  do,  either  through  his  body  or  in  spite  of  his 
body  —  he  must  create  an  atmosphere  in  which  justice 
seems  awfully  grand  and  in  which  injustice  seems  as 
despicable. 

It  would  not  be  adequate  to  say  that  Bcecher's 
body,  at  the  incandescent  moment  of  his  supreme 
utterance,  was  "the  organ  of  his  mind."  The  whole 
being  called  Beecher  was  organism  ;  he  was  it  and  it 
was  he.  If  there  had  not  been  such  integrity,  physical 
and  spiritual,  in  the  fact  called  Beecher,  there  would 
have  been  too  much  of  his  somewhat  too  short  body. 
In  Gladstone's  case,  as  I  heard  him  at  Liverpool,  I 
thought  if  he  had  spoken  with  less  loftiness  and  had 
avoided  what  a  friend  near  me  called  his  ingrained 
moral  narrowness,  he  would  have  been  just  a  little  too 
tall.  Such  is  the  miracle  of  the  relationship  of  mind 
and  body  in  the  case  of  the  great  orator.  Of  all  ora- 
tors I  have  ever  studied,  these  men  most  illustrated 
the  difference  between  mind  embodied  and  mind 
incarnate. 

How  much  of  the  effect  for  brotherly  winning  and 
uplifting  toward  the  apparently  cold  heights  of  right- 
eousness lay  in  Beecher's  indubitable  physical  vitality 


as  an  ©cator  39 

and  his  making  it  a  radiation  of  his  spiritual  self, 
I  never  was  quite  able  to  make  out.  This  is  prob- 
ably not  oratory  but  it  is  of  oratory,  and  without 
Mr.  Beecher's  phenomenal  power  in  this  respect  he 
could  not  have  won  men.  Preaching  once  in  Chica2:o 
and  urging  men  to  climb  up  by  the  grace  of  God  from 
the  animal  toward  the  angel,  he  stood  for  a  moment 
so  excellent  an  animal  as  he  pronounced  the  word 
"basilar"  that  a  base  man  sitting  next  to  a  refined 
gentleman  said  :  "  That  man  can  make  me  feel  that 
I  can  be  as  noble  as  he  looks,  when  he  looks  his  best, 
because  he  gets  hold  of  me  physically.  He  is  the  real 
thing  in  both  cases."  This  is  character  rather  than 
oratory  obeying  what  is  called  "  the  first  principles  of 
address  in  starting  from  the  level  of  ordinary  thought 
and  feeling." 

Nevertheless  it  is  oratory,  too.  If  he  had  not 
opened  his  mouth,  the  impression  would  have  been 
that  made  by  an  orator,  the  orator  being,  as  Fox  said, 
"one  who  can  give  immediate  instantaneous  utterance 
to  his  thoughts."  Eloquence  is  always  more  than  one 
says  ;  it  is  the  communication  of  what  one  is  at  his 
best.  John  Bright  and  Henry  Ward  Beecher  had 
massive  proportions  to  the  eye,  like  Burke  and  Fox, 
Webster  and  Chalmers,  but  the  study  of  all  these  will 
not  disclose  such  an  interesting  likeness  as  that  which 
abides  between  Beecher  and  Mirabeau.  Every  man 
has  his  rhythm,  just  as  every  man  has  his  body;  the 
rhythm  and  the  stout,  elastic  frame  of  either  of  these 
men,  differing  startlingly  as  they  do,  might  be  taken 
for  those  of  the  other. 


40  Bcnr^  llflarD  JBcecber 

HIS    SERENITY 

Mr.  Beecher's  incandescence  was  not  less  impress- 
ive because  he  was  not  always  incandescent.  He 
could  literally  withdraw  himself  from  the  front  door 
or  windows  of  his  house  and  be  somnolent,  or  go  into 
one  of  the  chambers  of  himself  and  take  a  nap  men- 
tally. I  have  seen  him  doing  this  with  his  eyes  wide 
open  ;  others  were  suffering  from  the  irritating  prose 
of  a  would-be  poet-speaker ;  he  was  simply  withdrawn 
into  the  cushioned  serenity  of  himself.  It  was  on  the 
occasion  of  the  Herbert  Spencer  banquet ;  and  emi- 
nent but  very  heavy  were  some  of  the  speakers. 
Spencer  looked  at  times  as  if  he  wished  he  had  not 
written  the  books  which  they  praised.  More  than  one 
distinguished  man  looked  tired  and  bored. 

Shortly  before  Beecher  was  called  upon,  the  re- 
freshed soul  which  had  now  forsaken  its  couch,  where 
it  had  been  safe  from  the  irritation  of  illustrious  dull- 
ness, came  forth  and  looked  out  through  the  windows 
—  those  eyes  of  unforgetable  lucidity  and  depth.  All 
of  him  spoke  from  the  instant  he  found  his  feet  be- 
neath him.  Mentally  alert  and  entirely  furnished  with 
knowledge,  he  was  more  distinguished  in  that  speech 
through  the  luminosity  of  his  moral  attributes.  It 
was  the  most  courageous  speech  I  had  heard  from 
Mr.   Beecher. 

HIS    FEARLESSNESS 

My  father  had  repeated  to  my  childhood  passages 
from  addresses  which  he  had  heard  Mr.  Beecher 
deliver  when  mobs  were  howling  about  him  and  he 
confronted    the    horrible    visage    of     Civil    War ;     and 


42  mcnx^  TlClac&  JScccber 

he  always  told  me  that  Mr.  Beecher  impressed  him 
as  fearful,  yea,  decidedly  afraid  of  two  things  —  the 
possibility  of  being  wrong  mentally  with  respect  to 
the  subject  he  was  talking  about,  and  the  moral  peril 
of  being  unwilling  to  stand  by  the  truth  as  he  saw  it 
and  be  its  champion  to  the  end.  His  whole  soul  was 
so  intent  with  this  wholesome  fear  that  he  had  no 
other.  He  was  like  Lord  Lawrence,  who  "feared 
God  so  much  that  he  feared  not  man  at  all."  On 
that  occasion  he  was  not  delighting  Herbert  Spencer 
with  his  discriminating  and  warm  eulogy ;  he  was 
courageously  paying  a  debt  of  gratitude  and  discharg- 
ing an  obligation  with  utmost  freedom,  but  every 
attitude  uttered  Paul's  words,  "  With  a  great  sum 
have   I   obtained  this  freedom." 

Such  eloquence  as  Mr.  Beecher's  is  impossible 
without  that  courage  which  invigorates  the  brain  and 
makes  the  will  resistless.  It  may  be  born  and  nursed 
in  the  heart  and  enswathed  in  the  emotions,  as  the 
term  suggests,  but  it  alone  rescues  a  man  from  frag- 
mentariness  and  makes  him  whole  and  holy  as  a  leader 
of  men  through  public  speech.  Intellect,  sensibilities 
and  will  are  not  separate  compartments,  but  constitute 
one  overflowing  cup  of  power  in  all  eloquence. 

Doubtless  those  of  us  who  were  too  young  to  have 
beheld  the  monarch  when  he  was  a  war-horse  "and  his 
neck  was  clothed  with  thunder,"  received  the  some- 
what similar  impression  of  the  vivifying  and  unifying 
influence  of  his  courage  as  an  oratorical  force  when  we 
heard  him  in  the  times  of  his  severest  trial.  Was  it  a 
lecture  on  preaching  which  had  taken  shape  as  the 
bitter  cup  was  pressed  to  his  lips,  or  a  lecture  given 


Bs  an  ©rator  43 

in  a  strange  town  after  a  throng  of  hoodlums  had  be- 
fouled the  air  with  their  vile  hooting,  or  a  sermon  to 
college  young  men  such  as  I  heard  within  an  hour 
after  he  had  been  made  aware  of  the  dreadful  ava- 
lanche which  was  approaching  him,  he  was  the  same 
fervent,  human  unit  throughout  the  illuminating  hour. 
In  those  times  the  effect  upon  a  discriminating  hearer 
was  that  of  a  total  character — a  character  totalized  by 
fiery  courage,  making  his  eloquence  opalescent  because 
its  fire  was  revealed  everywhere. 

HIS    SELF-CONTROL 

If  Mr.  Beecher  had  not  possessed  a  magnetic 
centralness  of  character  which  forbade  easily  sepa- 
rable powers  and  interests  from  straying  out  the  field, 
he  would  have  been  simply  the  most  multitudinous 
collection  of  forces  which  ever  failed  in  public  life. 
He  had  wit  and  humor;  almost  always  they  did  noi 
have  him.  To  change  the  figure,  he  would  strike  a 
vein  which,  if  followed  up,  would  have  made  him  a 
clown  tossing  grotesque  chunks  of  ore  as  no  Grimaldi 
might  have  done  ;  but  suddenly  the  swirling  fires  of 
his  persistent  purpose  in  speech  would  melt  the  ore 
and  the  fine  gold  would  be  coined  into  noble  thoughts. 
His  humor  would  often  bubble  forth  with  a  hint  that 
the  hearer  might  soon  be  overwhelmed,  but  inimitably 
the  master  of  himself  was  its  master,  and  a  cup  full 
of  sparkling  water  would  be  handed  to  one  whose 
throat  had  been  a  little  dry  and  whose  appetite  now 
was  ready  for  wisdom. 

With  an  art  for  epigram  he  surprised  his  audience, 
but  never  lost  them  or  left  them  standing  at  the  quick 


44 


Kenrs  *WIlar5  mcccbev 


turn  in  the  roadway  where  so  unexpectedly  came  the 
brief  and  brilliant  vision.  The  temptation  to  let  the 
wheels  of  the  mind  go  round,  because  the  machinery 
was  noiseless,  had  its  death  at  birth  in  the  fact  that 
anything  like  conceit  over  such  a  happy  state  of  things 


Chair  used  by  Mr.  Beecher  in  Plymouth  Pulpit 

was  lost  in  the  serious  purpose  of  his  address,  which 
was  to  make  others  think  and  feel  and  will  as  he  did. 
As  much  might  be  said  of  his  boundless  sympathy. 
Those  eyes  were  roguish  with  laughter  no  more  often 
than  they  were  wet  with  tears.     At  the  old  Soldiers' 


as  an  ©rator  45 

Home  in  Dayton,  Ohio,  I  saw  him  touch  a  flag  and 
heard  him  utter  a  sentence  with  the  result  that  every- 
body was  weeping  and  he  himself  was  almost  un- 
manned with  emotion.  Instantly  the  disorganized 
man  was  reorganized  by  that  centralizing  life  purpose 
which  permitted  no  waste  of  such  precious  energies. 
He  saw  his  relationship  to  future  problems,  and  real- 
ized that  only  a  stern  devotion  to  duty  and  the  highest 
wisdom  could  meet  those  issues.  It  is  this  forceful 
manhood,  per-meated  with  loyalty  to  God  and  man, 
which  must  ever  be  regarded  as  the  energizing  and 
saving  secret  of  Beecher  the  orator. 

HIS    VOICE 

So  far  as  the  art  of  the  orator  is  concerned, 
Mr.  Beecher's  voice,  which  is  but  the  string  upon 
the  instrument,  was  the  organ  of  the  organism  most 
apparently  in  evidence.  Like  a  violinist  of  the  high- 
est power,  when  he  touched  it  his  total  self  touched 
it.  He  could  play  an  excellent  tune,  like  Paganini,  on 
one  string,  but  any  such  consideration  of  the  stringed 
instrument  overestimates  the  string ;  it  must  not  leave 
out  the  instrument  especially. 

No  elocutionary  training  could  have  saved  him 
from  ministerial  sore  throat,  or  his  audience  from  min- 
isterial sore  ears,  which  is  a  consequential  and  not  less 
distressing  malady.  His  justness  of  emphasis  came 
from  his  fine  perception ;  his  painter-like  sympathy 
for  rightness  of  color,  and  his  will  to  express  him- 
self in  perfect  draughtsmanship  —  simply  to  transfer 
his  character  into  another  character,  was  the  supreme 
and  easy  task  to  which  he  called  his  voice.     To  tell  the 


46  IHenrs  "WllarJ)  3Beecber 

truth  as  he  saw  it  required  an  instrument  unabused  by 
vociferation  and  free  from  the  sharpness  which  comes 
from  saying  sharp  things  too  frequently,  which  often 
cuts  the  thread  of  truth.  It  must  indeed  be  entirely 
melodious  as  truth  itself  is.  There  was  spiritual  good 
breeding  in  Beecher's  tones.  Such  a  voice  cannot  be 
made  in  one  generation.  It  was  as  variable  as  the 
portraits  of  the  man,  yet  from  thunder  to  whisper  it 
was  Beecher's  voice. 

This  artistic  passion  was  allied  with  almost  un- 
erring artistic  wisdom.  Like  George  Inness,  whose 
paintings  are  a  revelation  of  the  gradual  evolution  of 
a  soul  Mr.  Beecher  was  one  of  the  first  to  understand, 
the  great  preacher  himself  advanced  from  an  almost 
pharisaic  legalism  to  an  almost  unparalleled  liberty. 
He  knew  the  secret  of  elimination.  "Thou  canst 
if  thou  wilt"  —  so  the  devil  always  says  to  a  big, 
brainy  and  capable  man.  Animated  and  ardent,  the 
orator  always  feels  as  Webster  did  when,  after  talking 
a  few  moments  in  reply  to  Hayne,  everything  that 
he  had  ever  thought  or  heard  or  read  was  within  his 
grasp,  and  he  had  only  "  to  seize  a  thunderbolt  as  it 
went  smoking  by  and  hurl  it  at  him," 

More  than  thunderbolts  came  into  the  field  of 
Beecher's  vision,  urging  themselves  on  his  attention 
and  pleading  to  enter  into  his  picture,  but  he  had  the 
ability  to  leave  this  pretty  flower  and  that  noble  tree 
out  of  his  canvas.  "This  one  thing  I  do  "  —  that  was 
the  intensely  wrought  law,  self-imposed  and  radiant,  to 
which  he  gave  obedience.  So  will  the  artist  live  for- 
ever in  his  art,  as  Raphael  in  his  Sistine  Madonna  and 
Richard  Warner  in  Parsifal. 


AN    ENGLISH    ESTIMATE    OF    BEECHER 

By  Rev.  W.  J.  Dawson,  D.D. 

The  Minister  of  Highbury  Quadrant  Congregational  Church,  London. 

Henry  Ward  Beecher  is  for  many  of  us  in  Eng- 
land the  greatest  preacher  of  the  last  decades  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Spurgeon  surpassed  him  in  evan- 
gelical force,  Liddon  in  the  elaboration  of  his  rhet- 
oric, Parker  in  brilliancy  of  phrase,  but  none  of  these 
equaled  him  in  general  mass  of  intellect,  in  philosophic 
grasp,  in  native  genius.  It  is  hard  to  say  what  genius 
is  ;  we  endeavor  to  define  it  by  such  terms  as  charm, 
magnetism,  and  a  peculiar  lambency  of  mind,  "a  light 
that  never  was  on  sea  or  land  "  ;  but  whatever  it  is, 
no  one  could  be  in  Beecher's  company  for  half  an 
hour  without  knowing  that  he  possessed  it.  He  had 
in  a  supreme  degree  the  "genius  to  be  loved."  He 
captivated  men  without  an  effort.  He  never  attempted 
to  do  anything  that  could  be  called  great,  and  yet  he 
was  always  great.  He  appeared  absolutely  simple, 
and  yet  his  simplicity  was  the  last  equation  of  pro- 
fundity. He  was  a  preacher  by  vocation,  but  he  made 
one  feel  that  he  could  as  easily  have  been  a  states- 
man, a  prime  minister,  or  the  president  of  a  republic. 
It  is  scarcely  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  while  Beecher 
lived  no  other  American  bulked  very  large  in  English 
eyes.  He  was  the  typical  American  of  his  generation. 
He  rose  so  high,  he  cast  so  large  a  shadow,  he  held 
the  gaze   so   completely,  that   when   we   English   folk 

47 


48  Menr^  'QUlar&  JScecber 

thought  of  America  we  always  thought  of  Beecher. 
To  us  he  seemed  the  incarnation  of  the  national 
genius. 

The  salient  quality  which  impressed  me  most  in 
Beecher  was  the  supreme  ease  with  which  he  did  his 
work.  I  had  not  the  good  fortune  to  meet  him  on 
his  historic  visit  to  England  in  the  sixties  ;  that  was 
before  my  time.  During  his  last  visit  to  England, 
however,  I  heard  him  often  ;  I  sat  beside  him  on  the 
platform ;  I  had  ample  opportunity  of  studying  his 
methods  of  address ;  and  this  supreme  ease  with  which 
he  did  his  work  filled  me  with  astonishment.  He  never 
seemed  agitated,  nervous,  or  conscious  of  the  least 
strain,  however  vast  the  congregation  he  addressed. 
'His  audiences  were  not  always  quite  friendly.  There 
was  an  undercurrent  of  suspicion  which  he  was  much 
too  sensitive  not  to  perceive.  But  he  moved  before 
these  vast  crowds  always  like  a  man  at  ease.  He 
knew  his  own  integrity  and  he  knew  his  own  power. 
The  moment  he  began  to  speak  the  spell  of  his 
personality  began  to  work. 

PECULIARITY    OF    HIS    ORATORY 

At  first  his  speaking  created  a  sense  of  disappoint- 
ment ;  it  was  so  quiet,  so  colloquial,  so  free  from  the 
usual  artifice  of  the  orator.  He  seemed  to  be  stand- 
ing at  a  height,  aloof  from  his  audience,  talking  to 
himself  of  things  which  were  of  moment  to  himself 
alone.  He  did  not  even  try  to  make  himself  heard, 
and  many  amusing  contests  of  wit  between  himself 
and  his  hearers  arose  on  this  matter.  "Can't  hear," 
shouted  out  a  man  in  a  raucous  voice  in  Exeter  Hall 


Mrs.  Bet'clic, 


50  SHenrs  imarO  JBeecbet 

one  night.  "I  never  meant  you  to  hear  that," 
Beecher  retorted,  and  calmly  pursued  the  course  of 
his  argument.  Men  looked  at  one  another  and  mutely 
asked  what  they  had  come  out  for  to  see.  Where  were 
the  brilliant  paradox,  the  flash  of  epigram,  the  sono- 
rous declamation  which  English  audiences  had  learned 
to  expect  from  their  popular  orators  .-'  Where  were  the 
passion  and  intensity  which  lift  an  audience  to  its 
feet .''  Men  remembered  John  B.  Gough,  and  won- 
dered at  Beecher's  reputation.  They  remembered 
the  full  roll  of  Brlght's  and  Gladstone's  eloquence, 
stately,  impressive,  full  of  magnificent  modulations, 
an  eloquence'  like  the  sound  of  many  waters. 

This  quiet  man  went  on  talking  with  himself.  It 
seemed  to  him  of  no  importance  whether  his  audience 
thought  well  or  ill  of  him.  Then,  suddenly,  he  emitted 
a  spark  of  flame  that  ran  kindling  through  the  crowd. 
He  said  something  so  daring  or  so  piquant  that  men 
began  to  sit  up  stiff  upon  their  seats  and  lean  forward 
in  anxious  listening.  There  came  a  flash  of  humor, 
a  touch  of  pathos,  and  the  audience  quivered ;  a 
moment  later  frantic  excitement  seized  upon  the  con- 
gregation. And  still  he  was  talking  with  the  utmost 
quietness,  complete  master  of  himself  as  well  as  of 
his  hearers.  It  was  a  new  kind  of  oratory.  Nothing 
had  been  heard  like  it  in  England,  and  nothing  has 
been  heard  since.  So  Coleridge  might  have  talked 
out  of  the  depth  of  an  experience  and  wisdom  that 
seemed  more  than  finite  —  the  old  man  eloquent.  It 
was  a  kind  of  oratory  almost  too  rare  to  be  called 
oratory.  It  was  in  truth  much  more  than  oratory  ;  it 
was  the  speech  of  the  soul  finding  by  unerring  instinct 


Bn  Bngllsb  JEstlmate  51 

its  way  to  the  deepest  springs  of  life  and  thought   in 
his  hearers. 

GREATER    THAN    HIS    WORK 

There  is  a  useful  distinction  which  I  have  often 
had  occasion  to  draw  between  writers  and  speakers 
who  seem  more  than  their  works  and  those  who  seem 
less.  In  reading  some  books  and  listening  to  some 
men  I  am  conscious  that  the  best,  and  even  more  than 
the  best,  that  is  in  them  has  found  adequate  expres- 
sion. They  have  gained  a  height,  but  it  has  been  at 
the  expenditure  of  the  last  ounce  of  strength.  With 
Beecher  I  felt  precisely  the  reverse.  There  were 
reserves  in  him  which  he  never  called  into  action. 
He  drew  upon  a  mind  so  full,  a  nature  so  rich  that 
he  had  no  need  to  husband  his  resources.  His  per- 
sonality exceeded  by  far  his  finest  effort  to  express  it. 
He  could  afford  to  be  lavish  ;  he  could  always  have 
done  better  than  his  best  if  he  had  so  willed  it.  Very 
few  men  produce  this  impression. 

George  Meredith  impresses  me  and  all  who  know 
him  as  being  much  greater  than  his  works.  Coleridge 
impressed  his  contemporaries  as  greater  than  his 
poetry.  There  is  a  kind  of  divine  carelessness  in 
Shakespeare;  he  is  a  giant  who  never  used  his 
strength  to  the  full.  Beecher,  also,  I  think,  stands 
in  this  rare  category.  Nothing  that  he  did  was  so 
great  as  himself.  No  sermon  he  preached  and  no 
book  which  he  has  left  behind  him  gives  us  anything 
like  an  adequate  measurement  of  his  genius.  There 
was  a  kind  of  primeval  depth  and  freshness  in  him  ; 
he  was   inexhaustible  as   nature   herself.     In   this  re- 


52  "Hem^  MarO  aseecbcr 


[3d  poster  ;  size,  25x38  inches.l 

TVHO     IS 

H Y.WARD  BEECHER? 

He  is  the  man  who  said  the  best  blood  of  England  must  be  shed  to  atoue 
for  the  Trent  affair. 

He  is  the  man  who  advocates  a  War  of  Extermination  with  the  South, — saya 
it  is  incapable  of  "  re-generation,"  but  proposes  to  re-people  it  from  the  North 
by  "generation." — See  "Times." 

He  is  the  friend  of  that  inhuman  monster,  General  BUTLER.  He  is  the 
friend  of  that  so-called  Gospel  Preacher,  CHEEVER,  who  said  In  one  of  his 
sermons — "  Fight  against  the  South  till  Hell  Freezes,  and  then  continue  the 
battle  on  the  ice." 

He  is  the  friend  and  Supporter  of  a  most  debased  Female,  who  uttered  at  a 
public  meeting  in  America  the  most  indecent  and  cruel  language  that  evev 
polluted  female  lips. — See  "  Times." 

MEN  OF  MANCHESTER,  ENGLISHMEN! 

What  reception  can  you  give  this  wretch,  save  unmitigated  disgust  and  con- 
tempt ?  His  impudence  in  coming  here  is  only  efjualled  by  his  cruelty  and  im- 
piety Should  he,  however,  venture  to  appear,  it  behooves  all  right-minded  men 
to  render  as  futile  as  the  hrst  thi-s  second  attempt  to  get  up  a  public  demonstra- 
tion in  favor  of  the  North,  which  is  now  waging  War  against  the  South  with  a 
vindictive  and  revengeful  cruelty  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  any  Christian  land. 


English  Poster  of  i86j 

spect  Bcecher  is  unique,  I  have  heard  many  sermons 
and  addresses  more  brilliant  than  anything  which  I 
heard  from  him  ;  I  have  never  met  a  man  who  gave 
me  such  a  sense  of  inexhaustible  depth  of  nature. 

FAREWELL    MEETING    AT    CITY    TEMPLE 

The  most  triumphant  display  of  ability  which  I 
have  ever  known  was  Beecher's  farewell  meeting  at 
the  City  Temple,  on  his  last  visit.  He  spoke  all  to- 
gether for  about  two  hours  and  a  half.  I  sat  beside 
him,  and  was  amazed  to  find  that  the  entire  notes 
for  his  address  did  not  fill  half  a  sheet  of  note-paper. 
Never  was  his  humor  fresher,  never  was  he  more 
tender  and   wise  than   in  that   address.     But   remark- 


Bn  Engllsb  Estimate  53 

able  as  the  address  was,  it  was  insignificant  beside 
what  followed.  He  offered  to  answer  questions  on 
any  subjects  which  the  audience  might  select.  The 
subjects  selected  were  as  wide  as  human  thought. 
They  ranged  from  the  nature  of  the  Trinity  to  the 
ethics  of  socialism.  They  included  anxious  questions 
about  eternal  punishment  and  absurd  questions  about 
Anglican  orders. 

Never  once  did  Beecher  falter.  His  adroitness, 
his  nimbleness  of  mind,  his  wit,  his  keen  penetration 
into  the  characters  of  his  questioners,  were  simply 
astounding.  It  was  only  sheer  hunger  and  exigency 
of  time  that  broke  up  the  meeting.  The  people  would 
have  remained  for  hours  longer,  and  Beecher  showed 
no  trace  of  weariness.  Indeed,  he  humorously  com- 
plained, when  Dr.  Parker  closed  the  meeting,  that  he 
was  beginning  to  enjoy  himself.  Those  who  heard 
Beecher  on  that  memorable  morning  knew  how  true 
it  was  that  the  man  was  infinitely  greater  than  his 
works.  They  witnessed  the  free,  untrammeled  display 
of  a  supreme  genius  using  every  means  of  expression 
with  equal  ease,  capable  of  rising  to  any  demands 
made  upon  it,  moving  with  a  kind  of  effortless  felicity 
through  the  loftiest  realms  of  human  thought ;  and 
great  and  admirable  as  were  some  of  the  men  ranged 
round  Beecher  that  day,  they  and  the  audience  alike 
felt  that  no  one  of  them  approached  that  solitary 
greatness  which  distinguished  Beecher. 

MORE    THAN    A    RHETORICIAN 

Beecher  taught  the  preachers  of  England  many 
great  lessons,  and   their  debt   to   him   is   incalculable. 


54  Menrs  IClarO  JBcecbcr 

He  taught  us  naturalness.  He  taught  us  the  value 
of  speech  as  distinguished  from  mere  oratory.  He 
showed  us  how  great  was  the  power  of  the  man 
who  could  think  upon  his  feet.  He  taught  us  that 
neither  claptrap  nor  highly-wrought  artificial  rhetoric, 
nor  even  a  popular  theme,  was  needed  to  win  the 
ear  of  the  listening  multitude.  Given  the  man  who 
thought  clearly,  who  felt  deeply,  who  spoke  out  of 
his  heart  in  good,  honest  vernacular,  and  there  was 
no  theme,  however  philosophic,  that  could  not  engage 
the  deepest  interest  of  an  audience.  We  needed  those 
lessons,  for  the  traditions  of  pulpit  eloquence  when 
Beecher  began  his  ministry  were  mostly  of  a  quite 
different  kind.  I  do  not  wish  to  speak  a  single 
disparaging  word  of  such  genuine  pulpit  orators  as 
Parsons,  of  York,  or  Morley  Punshon,  but  we  know 
that  their  eloquence  was  artificial  in  form,  the  result 
of  laborious  elaboration,  built  up  upon  deliberate  an- 
tithesis and  climax  and  crowned  with  glittering  perora- 
tions. Spurgeon  had  already  struck  a  hard  blow  at 
this  method  of  preaching,  but  it  needed  a  Beecher  to 
demolish  it.  It  needed  some  one  to  show  us  that  the 
freedom  of  plain  speech  was  not  only  suited  to  simple 
evangelical  appeals,  but  also  to  the  widest  ranges  of 
philosophic  thought. 

To  have  heard  Beecher  was  an  era  in  the  life  of 
many  a  young  preacher.  He  went  home  to  prepare 
himself  instead  of  his  sermons.  He  saw  that  the 
secret  of  pulpit  force  was  in  direct  talk,  as  between 
man  and  man.  He  saw  that  to  be  himself  was  a 
better  aim  than  to  imitate  any  one  else,  however 
worthy    of    imitation.       He    discovered    that    the    full 


Bn  :englf8b  Hstlmate  55 

mind,  the  big  heart,  the  intense  soul,  made  the  suc- 
cessful preacher  —  these,  and  these  alone.  That  was 
a  great  lesson  to  learn.  It  revolutionized  the  pulpit, 
and  to  this  day  the  English  pulpit  bears  the  mark  of 
Beecher,  and  has  cause  to  thank  him. 


REV.     H.    \V.     BEECHER'!^ 

MISSION    TO    LIVERPOOL. 

THE  TRENT  AFFAIR. 

[Rev.  H.  W    Beecher  in  the  New  York  Independent. "[ 

"Should  the  President  quietly  yield  to  the  present  necessity  (viz..  the  de- 
livering up  of  Messrs.  Mason  and  Slidell)  as  the  lesser  of  two  evils  and  bide 
our  time  with  England,  there  will  be  a 

SENSE  of  WRONG,  of  NATIONAL  HUMILIATION 

so   PROFOUND,    AND   A 

HORKOR  OF  THE  UNFEELING  SELFISHNESS 
OF  THE  ENGLISH  GOVERNMENT 

in  the  great  emergency  of  our  affairs,  such  as  will  inevitably  break  out  by  and 
by  in  flames,  and  which  will  only  be  extinguished  by  a  deluge  of  blood !  We 
are  not  living  the  whole  of  our  life  to-day.  There  is  a  future  to  the  United 
States  in  which  the  nation  will  right  any  injustice  of  the  present  hour." 

The  Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  at  a  meeting  held  in  New  York,  at  the  time 
when  the  Confederate  Envoys,  Messrs.  Slidell  and  Mason,  had  been  surrendered 
by  President  Lincoln  to  the  British  Government,  from  whose  vessel  (the  Royal 
Mail  Steamer  Trent)  they  were  taken,  said 

"  That  the  Best  Blood  of  England  must  flow 
for  the  outrage  England  had  per- 
petrated on  America." 

This  opinion  of  a  Christian  (?)  minister,  wishing  to  obtain  a  welcome  in 
Liverpool,  whose  operatives  are  suffering  almost  unprecedented  hardships, 
caused  by  the  suicidal  war  raging  in  the  States  of  North  America,  and  urged 
on  by  the  fanatical  Statesmen  and  Preachers  of  the  North,  is  worthy  of  con. 
sideration. 


Poster  displayed  in  Englatid  when  Mr.  Beecher  spoke  there  in  i,S6j 


56  mem^  •BiflarD  JBeecbei 

INFLUENCE    ON    THEOLOGY 

And  Beecher  did  even  more  to  revolutionize  our 
theology.  He  would  probably  have  disowned  the 
claim  to  be  a  theologian  ;  he  was  rather  a  humanist 
than  a  theologian,  yet  his  influence  on  theology  was 
great.  He  helped  to  deliver  us  from  barbaric  formu- 
lae ;  he  made  us  conscious  of  the  magnanimity  of  God. 
For  myself,  I  bless  his  memory.  He  was  one  of  the 
greatest  and  one  of  the  best  of  men.  The  further  we 
remove  from  him  in  time  the  more  clearly  do  we  see 
the  dimension  of  his  genius.  I  believe  that  America 
has  produced  no  greater  man,  that  the  pulpit  has 
boasted  no  more  fruitful  force.  No  homage  done  to 
his  memory  can  be  extravagant,  and  I  rejoice,  in  the 
name  of  multitudes  of  my  countrymen,  to  lay  this 
humble  wreath  of  praise  upon  his  honored  grave. 


MR.    BEECHER    AS    AUTHOR    AND    EDITOR 

By  John  R.  Howard 

In  December,  1867,  Mr.  Beecher  entered  into 
contract  with  the  publishing  firm  of  J.  B.  Ford  and 
Company  to  write  "The  Life  of  Jesus,  the  Christ"; 
and  the  undertaking  was  an  intimate  part  of  his  life 
until  he  died,  in  1887.  Indeed,  it  was  about  the  latest 
subject  of  his  thought ;  the  day  before  his  fatal  attack 
he  asked  me  to  meet  him  the  next  evening  with  refer- 
ence to  the  renewal  of  his  work  upon  it.  From  the 
outset  it  meant  much  to  him  :  it  formed  the  basis  of 
his  studies ;  it  gave  fresh  inspiration  to  his  pulpit 
effort  and  enrichment  to  his  thought,  and  was  at  once 
the  stimulus  and  the  conservative  check  in  his  use 
of  the  new  evolutionary  philosophy,  which  was  grad- 
ually changing  his  views  of  things  human  and  divine. 

This  and  the  other  publications  that  rapidly  en- 
sued—  Plymouth  Pulpit,  The  Christian  Union,  and 
the  issue  of  volumes  of  sermons,  lectures,  and  other 
matters  new  and  renewed  (altogether  about  forty  vol- 
umes) —  entailed  upon  the  members  of  the  firm  a 
familiarity  with  his  ways  of  working.  One  can  hardly 
speak  of  his  "methods,"  since  the  exigencies  of  his 
life  precluded  him  from  system  —  except  as  to  sermon- 
making  and  preaching,  always  his  main  business. 

Yet  he  worked  on  general  principles,  too.  "  Read- 
ing maketh  a  full  man ; "  and  this  man's  habit  of 
reading  —  not   in   preparation  for  specific  productions 

57 


58  Mcnrs  marCi  3Bcecbcr 

so  much  as  for  broad  comprehension  of  departments 
and  phases  of  thought  —  furnished  his  mind  and  stim- 
ulated its  powers.  Witness  in  early  manhood  his 
Indianapolis  experiences.  When  at  one  time  he  had 
continued  daily  preaching  during  eighteen  consecutive 
months,  for  relaxation  after  preaching  he  took  up  the 
Loudon  encyclopaedias  —  of  horticulture,  agriculture 
and  architecture;  also  Lindley's  "Horticulture"  and 
Gray's  "Structural  Botany";  all  of  which  he  says  he 
read,  "not  only  every  line,  but  much  of  it  many  times 
over."  Thus  he  confirmed  his  original  love  of  nature 
and  acquired  an  understanding  of  it,  so  that  his 
much-praised  work,  when  shortly  after  he  edited  The 
Western  Farmer  and  Gardener,  was  out  of  well-earned 
knowledge. 

Most  of  Mr.  Beecher's  books  were  but  the  print- 
ing of  his  spoken  words;  "Norwood,"  and  "The  Life 
of  Jesus,  the  Christ,"  together  with  sundry  volumes  of 
"Star  Papers,"  etc.,  are  exceptions.  The  first  is  a 
charming  series  of  chapters  on  New  England  scenery 
and  life,  with  enough  of  a  story  to  hold  it  together, 
and  more  wit,  wisdom,  philosophy  and  religion  than 
often  get  into  a  "novel."  This  required  no  study  of 
material,  but  was  a  weary  labor  of  pen-work  to  his 
unaccustomed  hand.  The  "  Life  "  is  a  most  luminous 
and  suggestive  exposition  of  the  deeds  and  words  of 
the  Master. 

The  work  on  the  Life  of  Christ  was  begun  in  a 
fashion  like  his  early  horticultural  studies.  He  had 
already  kept  well  abreast  with  the  orthodox  and  the 
skeptical  schools  of  England,  France  and  Germany, 
while   maintaining   interest    in    the   new   lines   of    the 


210  Butbor  anC>  BMtor  59 

evolutionary  writers,  but  now  undertook  to  familiarize 
himself  thoroughly  with  them.  He  welcomed  these 
varied  lights  of  criticism  and  philosophy ;  yet  he 
recognized  what  he  called  "the  chill  mist  of  doubt" 
arising  from  them,  while  his  spiritual  nature  craved 
and  held  to  the  truths  of  the  other  world  ;  so  that 
he  took  the  materials  of  the  Gospels  as  his  final  and 
unquestioned  basis.  Moreover,  he  felt  that  too  many 
of  the  attempts  to  write  the  Life  of  Christ  had  been 
dialectical  and  critical  in  spirit,  and,  as  he  wrote, 
"while  they  may  lead  scholars  from  doubt  into  cer- 
tainty, they  are  likely  to  lead  plain  people  from 
certainty  into  doubt,  and  to  leave  them  there.  I 
have,  therefore,"  he  continued,  "studiously  avoided 
a  polemic  spirit,  seeking  to  produce  conviction  with- 
out controversy." 

While  carefully  considering  the  works  of  critical 
objectors,  then,  he  did  not  argue  against  them,  but 
endeavored,  as  far  as  possible,  so  to  state  the  facts  as 
to  take  away  the  grounds  from  which  the  objections 
were  aimed  ;  in  brief,  to  depict  not  the  modern  sub- 
ject of  discussions,  but  the  Jesus  of  the  four  Evan- 
gelists, in  his  disposition,  his  social  relations,  his 
deeds  and  his  doctrines. 

But  all  this  laying  out  of  the  ground  took  time, 
and  he  wrote  but  little  for  a  year  or  two.  The  first 
volume,  however,  was  published  in  June,  1871,  and  in 
1872-3  he  had  written  about  two-thirds  of  the  second; 
after  that,  nothing. 

In  discussing  Mr.  Beecher  as  author  and  editor 
some  drawbacks  to  his  performance  of  pen-duties 
must   be   noted.     First,    there   was   his   great   church. 


60  Wenrs  marD  JBeecbcr 

Such  cares  as  this  entailed,  together  with  his  preach- 
ing and  lecture-room  services,  were  his  chief  interest 
at  all  times.  Besides  this,  there  were  the  incessant 
demands  upon  him  from  the  public  to  be  the  voice  on 
all  important  occasions ;  there  were  interviews  with 
reporters,  and  such  a  multiplicity  of  applications  for 
sympathy  and  aid  from  citizens  beyond  his  parish  and 
from  strangers  as  probably  few  men  have  ever  been 
subject  to. 

There  were  other  —  at  first  subtle,  and  afterwards 
outbreaking  and  volcanic  —  obstructions  to  the  equabil- 
ity of  mind  needed  for  such  work.  These  are  familiar, 
and  need  not  be  rehearsed,  but  enough  has  been  sug- 
gested to  show  how  impossible  it  was  for  Mr.  Beecher 
to  have  regular  methods  of  literary  labor.  He  had  to 
work  as  he  could,  and,  lacking  the  habit  of  system, 
he  was  obliged  to  await  the  mood.  When  it  came,  his 
quill  flew  over  the  paper  with  impatient  leaps  and 
dashes,  and  he  produced  very  rapidly. 

Perhaps  a  reminiscence,  which  I  find  in  an  old 
journal  of  mine  kept  at  that  time,  will  give  a  clear 
idea  of  his  way  of  working  as  author.  After  the 
completion  of  Volume  I  of  this  book,  in  June,  1871, 
he  meant,  after  the  summer's  rest,  to  go  right  on 
into  Volume  II ;  but  in  January,  1872,  he  commenced 
the  first  of  his  three  series  of  "  Lectures  on  Preaching" 
before  the  Yale  Divinity  School,  so  that  he  did  very 
little  writing  —  on  the  book,  none.  He  was  reading, 
however.  One  day  I  went  in  and  found  him  deep  in 
a  book,  before  the  fire.  "  I'm  reading  up  on  miracles," 
he  cried,  with  a  kind  of  glee  ;  "  I  feel  the  swellings 
of  new  buds  ;    I  shall  have  to  begin  again  soon  !  " 


Bs  Butbor  anD  B&ltot  61 

But  he  did  not.  On  April  29  I  said  to  him,  "Do 
you  know  that  March  ist  is  gone,  and  April  ist  is 
gone,  and  May  ist  is  at  hand,  and  that  new  writing 
is  not  even  begimf  "I  do,  to  my  sorrow,"  he  an- 
swered. "And  to-morrow,  unless  the  Lord  hates  me, 
I  shall  begin  upon  it." 

So  the  next  morning,  when  I  called  in,  he  was  up 
in  his  study.     He  had   his   "Volume  I"  before  him. 


The  Hicks  Street  house  in  lohi,  h  Mr.  /,V,v/<7  died 

his  "Consolidated  Gospels,"  and  a  clean  lot  of  paper. 
"The  next  thing,"  said  he,  "is  the  Gadarenes  and 
the  pigs,"  and  he  gave  a  funny  snuffle.  "  I  don't 
know  exactly  how  to  treat  that  episode.  If  I  come 
at  it  from  the  critical  and  explanatory  side,  I  invite 
attack  from  all  quarters  — for  I  can't  agree  with 
everybody,  and  as  to  fighting  in  this  book,  I  zvont ! 
There  is  a  graphic  and  dramatic  way  of  treating  all 
these  strange  and  miraculous  elements,  as  Shakes- 
peare treated  the  supernatural  —  using  it  for  his  pur- 


62  Wenrs  MarD  3Beecber 

pose,  but  leaving  it  without  an  attempt  to  explain  or 
make  it  intelligibly  real.  In  fact,  these  things  occur 
in  the  New  Testament  history  in  much  that  way. 
They  come  quietly  into  view,  like  a  cloud  —  which 
looms  up,  casts  its  shadow  on  the  landscape  for  a 
time,  and  passes  away  without  effort  or  commotion. 
Treated  thus,  they  offend  no  darling  theory ;  no  critic 
is  agitated  to  attack  the  view,  and  the  moral  and 
spiritual  effect  aimed  at  is  achieved.  I  don't  know 
what  the  critics  zvo2ild  have  done  with  my  book  with- 
out that  chapter  on  '  The  Doctrinal  Basis.'  That 
seems  their  only  hold  ;  to  all  the  rest  they  are  mild 
as  milk.  After  all,  this  attempting  to  theologize  on 
God  and  his  manifestation  in  Jesus  is  but  the  meager- 
est  and  poorest  way  of  getting  at  him.  The  theory  — 
any  theory  of  that  problem  —  never  made  a  man  a 
Christian  yet ;  but  the  simple  statement  that  God  so 
loved  the  world  that  he  sent  his  own  Son  to  die  for 
it,  that  is  intelligible  to  the  heart  of  man.  It  is  at 
once  a  force,  a  motive.  The  attempt  to  commute  a 
moral  impulse  into  an  intellectual  idea  is  about  like 
changing  grapes  into  wine.  The  wine  is  good  for 
some  purposes,  undoubtedly,  but  it  isn't  grapes  —  the 
form  is  changed  and  it  becomes  an  entirely  different 
thing." 

And,  in  fact,  that  single  chapter  was  the  only 
portion  objected  to  by  anybody ;  it  was  theological, 
and  that  was  enough  to  invite  dissent.  The  volume 
stands  to-day  a  fit  memorial  of  the  intellectual  and 
spiritual  nature  of  the  man ;  a  treasury  of  noble 
thoughts,  of  delicate  imaginings,  of  stimulating  sug- 
gestions,   shrewd    readings    of    human    nature,    a    pro- 


Me  Butbor  anD  SMtor  63 

found  insight  into  the  character  of  Jesus.  It  is  a 
great  example  of  Mr.  Beecher's  wonderfully  combined 
common  sense  and  lofty  spirituality. 

After  some  more  talking  about  the  topic  in  hand, 
he  said,  "  Well,  now  you  shall  see  me  begin  Volume 
Second,"  and  with  his  spattering  quill  he  dashed  off 
the  title  of  the  next  chapter. 

He  had  two  "good  days,"  and  when  I  saw  him  on 
the  evening  of  the  second,  he  said,  "I  had  expected 
to  have  a  severe  tussle  with  those  maniacs  and  devils 
among  the  Gadarenes,  but  I  think  I've  finished  them  ; 
another  such  day  and  I'll  have  finished  my  chapter." 

I  mentioned  a  certain  book  we  had  been  discuss- 
ing previously,  and  asked  if  he  found  it  of  any  special 
use.  "No,"  he  replied,  "I  find  no  single  book  help- 
ful when  I  am  actively  at  work.  I  do  not  generally 
like  to  read  studiously  any  one  book  when  I  am 
writing.  I  am  very  sensitive  to  books,  and  do  not 
wish  to  get  myself  impressed  in  any  given  direction. 
I  prefer  to  take  up  one  after  another,  especially  books 
of  original  investigation,  and  get  the  general  effect  of 
their  views.  Thus  I  am  able  to  form  my  own  opinion 
under  the  cross-lights  of  all  these  others,  and  the  re- 
sult is  that  my  way  of  stating  it,  when  completed,  is 
more  likely  to  be  true  and  less  likely  to  be  offensive 
to  any.  I  try  to  find  the  elements  of  truth  in  each, 
and  so  to  get  a  many-sided  view." 

I  find  among  my  fragmentary  memoranda  of  those 
days  one  dated  "Christmas,  1874,"  which  gives  one 
of  his  suggestive  ways  of  looking  at  the  familiar 
gospel  story,  which  I  do  not  believe  he  ever  put 
upon  paper.     He  said  ; 


64  Kcnri2  MarJ)  JBcccber 

"I  have  just  been  planning  out  a  new  chapter." 
With  the  publisher's  instinct,  I  asked,  "  Did  you  jot 
it  down?"  "No;  it  is  a  very  clear  line  of  thought. 
It  is  the  development  of  contrast  between  the  appar- 
ent literalness  and  the  real  mysticism  of  Christ's 
teachings.  All  through  his  life  and  sayings  ran  a 
double  line.  He,  himself,  knew  it  and  avowed  it. 
He  taught  them  in  parables,  that  hearing  they  might 
not  understand ;  and  they  felt  it,  too,  for  they  came 
to  him  and  asked,  '  How  long  makest  thou  us  to 
doubt  ? '  Now,  in  view  of  this,  look  back  at  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount.  There  was  proclaimed  a  line 
of  ethics  in  regard  to  personal  morality,  to  honesty, 
to  self-defense,  etc.,  that  if  taken  literally  would  be 
utterly  subversive  of  society.  See  how  it  comes  out 
in  John's  Gospel  and  grows  more  and  more  strong  to 
the  very  end !  How  he  plays  with  the  figures  of  the 
vine,  the  life,  the  light,  bread,  wine,  mansions,  etc., 
flashing  them  here  and  there  like  illusions !  He  was 
the  most  mystical  and  figurative  of  teachers.  In  face 
of  this,  when  people  come  to  some  single  point,  like 
the  finality  of  punishment,  see  how  they  pin  you  down 
to  the  literal  words  given  in  translation  as  the  words 
of  Jesus  —  *  He  said  so  and  so' — as  if  he  were  usu- 
ally given  to  saying  the  exact,  literal  thing  that  he 
meant ! " 

During  1872-3  Mr.  Beecher  wrote  seven  or  eight 
chapters  of  the  Second  Volume ;  then  other  matters 
broke  in,  the  building  process  was  stopped,  and  al- 
though he  several  times  tried  to  start  it  again  — 
notably  in  the  last  year  of  his  life  —  the  grand  work 
stands  uncompleted,  except   as  it  was  pieced   out,  in 


66  Menrg  IliaarO  aseecber 

most  interesting  fashion,  from  his  sermons,  by  his 
son,  William  C.  Beecher,  and  his  son-in-law.  Rev. 
Samuel  Scoville.  And  the  possibility  of  that,  by  the 
way,  shows  how  his  interests  and  studies  kept  him 
upon  the  line  of  the  Master's  words  and  works  through 
many  years. 

Despite  the  fact  that  Mr.  Beecher  did  a  vast 
amount  of  writing,  the  mechanical  effort  of  putting 
pen  to  paper  so  lagged  behind  his  thought  that  it 
was  a  perpetual  hindrance  and  annoyance  to  him.  In 
proof-reading,  too,  he  suffered  the  disadvantage  of 
having  his  words  come  back  to  him  as  something 
not  altogether  his  own.  At  the  time  of  utterance, 
his  thinking  pressed  for  outlet  so  that  he  gave  little 
heed  to  form.  Although  the  general  matter  was  pre- 
pared beforehand,  and  long  habit  had  given  him  com- 
mand of  a  noble  vocabulary  and  a  forceful  style,  his 
plan  often  changed  while  he  was  preaching ;  its  pres- 
entation was  incited  by  the  moment,  and  its  mode 
was  in  all  details  a  matter  of  "unconscious  cerebra- 
tion." It  was  somewhat  so,  too,  in  writing,  for  he 
wrote  as  he  spoke,  in  heat ;  and  when  the  material 
came  before  him  in  cold  printer's  ink  it  was,  in  a 
manner,  strange  to  him  ;  so  that  instead  of  merely 
"correcting,"  he  found  stimulus  to  fresh  thinking, 
and  was  apt  to  make  havoc  with  the  printer's  work. 
All  these  things  hindered  him,  both  in  authorship  and 
in  journalistic  work.  His  sermons  he  rarely  saw  until 
they  came  to  him  in  the  Plymouth  Pulpit  pamphlet ; 
he  left  to  others  their  correcting,  a  certain  rough  edit- 
ing of  obvious  tongue-slips,   and   the  giving  of   titles. 

Yet,  that  his  discourses  were  thoroughly  planned 


68  IHenrg  TWlarO  aseecber 

was  made  evident  when  the  manuscript  report  of  one 
of  his  "Yale  Lectures  on  Preaching"  had  been  lost, 
and  the  stenographer  had  by  some  fatality  mislaid  or 
destroyed  his  notes.  Mr.  Beecher  sat  patiently  and 
reproduced  the  lecture  —  of  course,  not  in  the  original 
words,  but  in  the  distinct  line  of  thought  — •  while  it 
was  stenographically  taken  over  again  for  publication. 
His  ideas  were  clear  to  his  own  mind ;  when  he 
changed  dtiring  preaching,  it  was  because  he  came 
upon  something  that  he  considered  more  important 
than  his  original  preparation.  In  writing,  he  did 
less  of  this  than  most  men.  His  manuscripts  and 
proofs  of  the  Life  of  Christ  show  many  changes  of 
expression,  but  not  many  alterations  in  the  idea  he 
had  chosen  to  put  forward. 

One  of  Mr.  Beecher's  editorial  labors  should  be 
at  least  mentioned  —  the  "  Plymouth  Collection  of 
Hymns  and  Tunes,"  the  pioneer  of  Congregational 
singing  in  America,  with  a  word  as  to  its  courageous 
inclusion,  greatly  to  the  enrichment  of  worship,  of 
hymns  from  Catholic,  Unitarian  and  other  sources, 
then  unusual  to  the  orthodox  Protestant. 

Mr,  Beecher's  editing  of  The  Christian  Union  de- 
serves more  than  a  final  sentence  or  two.  He  had  had 
experience  in  journalism.  While  a  theological  student 
he  had  for  some  months  edited  The  Cincinnati  Journal, 
in  Indianapolis  The  Western  Farmer  and  Gardener,  and 
both  with  noticeable  ability.  He  had  written  much  for 
The  New  York  Independent,  with  national  effect,  and 
was  for  some  time  its  ed'tor.  He  had  his  own  ideas 
about  a  religious  paper,  and  infused  them  into  The 
Christian    Union.       He    made    it    purely    unsectarian, 


Bs  Butbor  and  JE&itor  69 

although  he  himself  was  a  sturdy  Congregationalist, 
with  firm  belief  in  the  independence  and  the  fellowship 
of  the  churches.  As  he  announced,  he  did  "  breathe, 
through  the  columns  of  The  Christian  Union,  Christian 
love,  courage,  equity,  and  gentleness."  He  aimed  to 
abolish  the  "sacred"  and  "secular"  discrimination, 
and  to  bring  the  spirit  of  Christ  to  bear  upon  all  the 
interests  of  man. 

During  the  first  year  (1870)  he  wrote  much  for  the 
paper  (and  none  on  the  book) ;  after  that  he  kept  his 
eye,  his  mind  and  his  heart  on  the  former  —  and  his 
hand,  too  —  influencing  its  workers  much  as  he  did 
Plymouth  Church.  His  spirit  informed  and  guided  it, 
and,  no  less  than  his  name,  was  the  power  that  swept 
it  to  its  great  success,  although  ably  supplemented 
by  the  clear-eyed  management  and  admirable  editorial 
writing  of  Mr.  George  S.  Merriam,  the  working  editor 
for  five  and  a  half  years,  who  furnished,  of  course,  an 
indispensable  element. 

There  is  no  space  to  detail  Mr.  Beecher's  many 
peculiarities  —  of  rapid  and  forceful  writing,  of  either 
reluctant  or  destructive  and  reconstructive  proof-read- 
ing, the  alternations  of  despair  and  exaltation  among 
his  coworkers  at  getting  nothing  from  him,  or  being 
rejoiced  by  an  article  or  inspired  by  an  hour  of  elo- 
quent talk  at  the  office.  The  field  is  wide,  but  this 
corner  of  it  is  fenced  in  by  the  limits  of  a  brief  article. 
And  here  we  must  leave  it. 

The  memory  of  the  man,  in  the  consciousness  of 
one  who  knew  him  intimately  for  forty  years  and 
worked  beside  him  for  twenty,  is  one  of  boundless 
mental   resource,    perennial    humor  and    sunniness    of 


70  mcnrg  MarO  JSeecber 

temper,  a  profound  spirituality,  and  an  amazingly  prac- 
tical embodiment  of  the  spirit  of  Christ  in  living  good- 
ness. Here  was  a  sweet-souled,  great-hearted.  Chris- 
tian, manly  man,  a  life  employed  with  rare  singleness 
of  purpose  in  bringing  Christ  to  men  and  men  to 
Christ. 


THE    CONTRIBUTION    OF    MR.    BEECHER 
TO    LITERATURE 

By  Rev.  Alford  B.  Penniman,  Chicago 
Looking  over  my  large  Beecher  library  I  am  at 
a  loss  to  tell  what  to  omit  in  a  relative  estimate. 
Mr.  Beecher  himself  disclaimed  rank  among  men  of 
letters  as  he  disclaimed  place  among  professional 
theologians.  We  cannot  imagine  Mr.  Beecher  hang- 
ing around  a  country  churchyard  seven  years  to  pro- 
duce one  poem,  as  did  Gray.  He  wrote  spontaneously 
out  of  his  mood  and  vision,  as  Burns  wrote  much  of 
"Tarn  O'Shanter"  during  a  few  moments  when  Jean 
Armour  stole  along  quietly  behind  him  in  the  broom- 
corn  on  the  bank  of  the  Nith.  He  was  a  prose  poet, 
endowed  for  work  of  the  first  order.  Like  his  Master, 
he  wrote  on  the  popular  heart  rather  than  on  parch- 
ment. He  spoke  in  parables  to  the  whole  man  instead 
of  risking  content  with  more  limited  influence.  Lit- 
erature as  the  incarnation  rather  than  the  dress  of 
thought,  he  held  in  high  esteem.  From  this  point 
of  view  his  literary  work  has  been  vastly  underesti- 
mated. His  humanism  is  so  unique  that  his  books 
will  abide.  The  odiuui  thcologicuin,  not  above  bring- 
ing to  its  aid  false  witness  and  scandal,  has  only  a 
little  delayed  a  more  just  estimate  of  his  literary 
work. 

Even    in    the    chance    fragments    culled    from    his 
sermons    he    was    great.      He    rose    in    spite    of    the 

71 


72  Kenr^  marD  JBeccber 

"  periodical  misreports  of  the  reporters."  Many  well- 
arranged  anthologies  have  appeared.  One  extensive 
selection  of  five  hundred  indexed  pages  was  compiled 
by  Rev.  G.  D.  Evans,  of  London  (1870),  and  entitled, 
"One  Thousand  Gems,"  veritable  "apples  of  gold  in 
pictures  of  silver,"  The  English  publishers  have 
often  been  more  diligent  to  gather  Mr.  Beecher's 
sermons  and  scatter  them  over  the  world  than  have 
our  own.  Mr.  Dickinson,  of  Farringdon  Street,  Lon- 
don, sold  me  two  volumes  entitled,  "  Forty-eight 
Sermons  by  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  Preached  Previous 
to  1867."  Up  to  that  time,  on  this  side  of  the  sea, 
no  enterprise  corresponds  to  that  period  save  the 
elephantiasis  issues  of  The  Independent  and  some  old- 
time  journals. 

About  1867  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  began  a  better 
selection.  From  five  hundred  sermons  he,  with  the 
aid  of  Mr.  Beecher,  chose  forty-six,  representing  much 
variety  of  theme,  construction  and  treatment.  The 
next  series  of  sermons  is  now  published  in  ten  vol- 
umes under  five  covers,  containing  two  hundred  and 
sixty-three  sermons.  This  treasure  mine  is  so  much 
of  it  pure  gold  that  no  one  has  proposed  to  smelt  it 
over,  certainly  not  into  forty-six  sermons  for  this 
period  between   1869-73. 

If  a  theological  student  can  get  only  one  series 
of  Mr.  Beecher's  sermons,  his  choice  should  fall  upon 
the  series  from  1873-75,  being  one  hundred  and  four 
sermons  in  four  volumes,  representing  the  height  of 
his  personality  and  pulpit  power. 

From  1875  on,  the  authorized  publication  of  his 
sermons  continued  in  unabated  power,  as  found  in  the 


Mie  dontrlbutfon  to  Xiterature  73 

weekly  issue  of  Plymouth  Pulpit.  Special  note  should 
be  made  of  the  anticipation  of  the  newer  Bible  study 
in  his  "Bible  Studies,"  or  the  publication  of  certain 
Sunday  evening  lectures.  The  volume,  "  Evolution 
and  Religion,"  dealt  with  nature,  revelation  and  the 
background  of  mystery,  and  other  related  themes.  It 
was  his  last  great  message  to  a  generation  of  youth 
trained  in  scientific  studies  or  indirectly  affected  by 
them.  It  was  the  message  of  a  teacher  calmly  unfold- 
ing the  results  of  the  long  brooding  and  practical 
years  ;  a  teacher  who  taught  what  he  termed  a  "  semi- 
nal theory  of  development"  long  before  the  publication 
of  the  "Origin  of  Species." 

The  best  work  of  Mr.  Beecher's  life,  before,  during, 
or  after  the  war,  was  done  under  fire.  The  "  Life  of 
Christ "  was  written  during  his  trouble  of  the  seven- 
ties. Asked  why  he  did  not  write  about  the  later 
scenes  as  well  as  the  earlier  in  the  life  of  our  Lord 
he  replied,  "  Perhaps  God  has  a  Gethsemane  for  me 
to  pass  through  as  a  preparation  for  that  work." 

Another  book  indispensable  for  the  young  man 
entering  the  ministry  is  the  "Yale  Lectures  on 
Preaching,"  delivered  in  three  series  from  1872  to 
1874.  Comparing  them  with  each  other,  the  third 
series  is  the  best,  the  first  series  ranks  next  and  the 
second  series,  though  valuable,  is  third  in  relative 
importance. 

Let  us  not  fail  to  note  how  unbiased  men,  for 
example,  in  Great  Britain,  who  knew  him  almost 
entirely  by  his  books,  regarded  him.  For  this  testi- 
mony read  "A  Summer  in  England  with  Henry  Ward 
Beecher"  (1886),  compiled  by  the  late  Major  James  B. 


'74  THenrs  "WllarJ)  JBeecber 

Pond.  There  are  passages  in  this  book,  quoted  from 
Mr.  Beecher,  which  represent  a  very  apotheosis  of 
friendship,  heart  power  and  benediction.  Nothing 
in  the  classic  memoirs  of  Charles  Kingsley,  F.  D. 
Maurice  or  Norman  Macleod  equals  them. 

The  volume  entitled  "Patriotic  Addresses"  is  his 
one  book  appealing  to  all  sorts  of  civilized  and  un- 
civilized men.  It  is  an  octavo  of  eight  hundred  and 
fifty-seven  pages.  Here  lives  again  the  victorious 
reformer,  prophet-statesman  and  orator,  glowing  in 
cold  type,  converting  the  public  sentiment  of  Britain 
from  hate  to  neutrality,  and  finally  to  friendship  with 
enthusiasm;  raising  the  flag  at  Sumter,  "without  the 
loss  of  a  single  star";  making  himself  almost  a 
necessity  to  the  salvation  of  this  whole  brave  nation  ; 
affording  material  for  an  American  epic  by  an 
American  Homer,  perchance  some  untrammeled  Burns, 
whose  poetic  genius,  more  likely  than  not,  will  find 
him  in  the  wilderness,  as  Lincoln  and  Beecher  were 
found. 

As  the  light  of  day  fades  on  his  honest  toil  his 
words  ring  the  angchis  of  a  new  church  catholic,  and 
chime  the  chant  of  faith  and  hope  and  love  ;  words 
matchless,  home-stained,  radiant,  condensed,  sunbeams 
burning  and  beautiful ;  words  of  our  great  friend  and 
commoner,  the  minister  of  racial  brotherhood  and 
divine  love,   Henry  Ward  Beecher. 


AN    ABRIDGED    BEECHER    BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Supplementary  to  Books  Mentioned  in  Foregoing 
Article.  —  A.  B.  P. 

1.  The  Set^en  Lectures  fo  Young  Men  delivered  at 
Indianapolis  is  the  "eldest  born"  of  Mr.  Beecher's  books 
(1844).  To  this  volume  were  added  five  more  lectures  of 
the  same  period.  D.  Appleton  and  Company,  1879,  is  the 
copyright  mark  of  my  copy.  This  is  written  in  his  early 
tropical  style,  but  not  overdrawn  for  life  in  the  West  at 
that  time.  When  Dr.  James  Brand,  of  Oberlin,  applied  in 
a  sermon  the  personification  of  the  "  corrupter  of  youth  " 
(page  187)  to  one  Thad.  Rowland,  reputed  as  a  masked 
saloon-keeper  of  a  drug-store  in  Oberlin,  there  was  enough 
ginger  left  in  the  lecture  on  Popular  Amusements  to  result 
in  Dr.  Brand  being  sued  for  two  thousand  dollars,  and 
costing  quite  a  little  trouble.  Mr.  Beecher  remarked  at 
the  time  (during  the  early  eighties)  that  his  lecture  was 
what  now  seemed  to  him  like  "  ripping  and  roaring." 

2.  Star  Papers,  or  Experietices  of  Art  and  Nature, 
1855.  Reappeared  1873  with  additional  articles  selected 
from  more  recent  writings.  These  papers  contain  the  glow 
of  the  enthusiasm  of  his  first  trip  to  Europe,  articles  on 
Ride  to  Kenilworth,  Stratford,  Shottery,  Oxford,  Luxem- 
bourg, National  Gallery,  etc.,  also  his  vacation  experiences 
in  America. 

3.  Life  Thoughts,  1858.  Compiled  by  Edna  Dean 
Proctor.  These  were  gathered  from  notes  taken  from 
the  Sabbath  sermons  and  Wednesday  evening  lectures. 
"  Leaves "  which  happened  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  one 
or  two  persons  from  a  "  full-boughed  tree  "  "  during  two 
successive  seasons."  —  Preface.  ^5 


76  IHcnrs  liflarO  JBeccbcr 

4.  Views  and  Experiences  on  Religious  Subjects,  or 
New  Star  Papers,  1859.  "These  articles  were  taken  for 
the  most  part  from  The  New  York  Independent.  If  un- 
worthy of  a  book  form  the  public  has  itself  to  blame,  in 
part,  for  encouraging  a  like  collection  of  Star  Papers  some 
years  ago." — H.  W.  B.  They  are  heart  talks,  including 
a  famous  sermon  at  Burton's  Old  Theater  on  "  How  to 
Become  a  Christian,"  quoted  in  full  by  Dr.  Abbott  in 
his  first  book  on  Mr.  Beecher,  prepared  with  the  help  of 
Mr.  Halliaday. 

5.  Eyes  and  Ears,  1862.  About  one  hundred  wide- 
awake articles  which  appeared  first  in  The  New  York  Ledger 
under  the  title,  "  Thoughts  as  They  Occur  to  One  Who 
Keeps  His  Eyes  and  Ears  Open."  They  are  written  in 
happy  moods,  and  "  inspire  a  love  for  nature."  It  is  the 
most  miscellaneous  in  the  topics  of  its  chapters  of  all  his 
works.  It  is  written  in  an  easy,  offhand  style,  breezy  and 
wholesome,  unstudied,  unpretentious,  and  very  characteristic. 

6.  Nor2vood,  1867.  Mr.  Beecher 's  only  attempt  at 
fiction,  being  an  interesting  tale  of  New  England  life, 
written  as  a  serial  for  The  New  York  Ledger  at  the  request 
of  Robert  Bonner. 

7.  Pleasant  Talks  about  Emits,  Elowers  and  Earming. 
Mr.  Beecher  prepared  for  these  talks  by  reading  Loudon's 
ponderous  tomes,  as  a  let-down  from  excitement  of  public 
speech  at  Indianapolis.  They  are  very  dry  reading  for 
most  people,  but  the  "talks"  are  anything  but  dry. 

8.  Prayers.  Several  volumes,  {a)  Prayers  from  Plym- 
outh Pulpit.  A.  C.  Armstrong  and  Son,  1895.  (U)  Prayers 
in  the  Congregation,  selected  by  Rev.  J.  R.  Brown.  James 
Clarke  and  Company,  London,  1886.  {c)  A  Book  of  Prayer. 
Fords,  Howard  and  Hulbert,  1892.  (<'/)  Aids  to  Prayer. 
Beecher,  Anson  D.  F.  Randolph  and  Company,  New  York. 
(No  date.) 

9.  Beecher    as    a    Humorist,    Eleanor     Kirk.       Fords, 


Bn  BbriDgeO  :t61bUograpbg 


77 


Howard  and  Hulbert,  1887.  Extracts  from  his  public 
utterances,  Mr,  Beecher  owed  much  to  the  spontaneity 
of  humor,  and  this  is  the  only  volume  set  apart  for  this 
phase  of  his  power, 

10.     Lecture  jRoom  Talks,  1870.     Pages  378,     I,  B.  Ford 
and  Company.     The  very  best  book  by  which  to  get  close 


A  little  known  picture  of  Mr.  Beecher 


to  Mr,  Beecher  as  he  appeared  at  the  week-night  prayer 
meetings  of  Plymouth  Church,  This  contains  his  parting 
words  on  the  occasion  of  his  second  trip  to  Europe  in  1863. 

11,  A  Summer  Parish,  1875,  I.  B,  Ford  and  Com- 
pany. Sermons  at  the  Twin  Mountain  House,  New  Hamp- 
shire.     1874,     Very  interesting,  but  out  of  print. 

12.  Religion  and  Duty.  James  Clarke  and  Company, 
London,    1887,       "Sunday"    readings    from    Henry    Ward 


78  Menrs  MacD  JScecbcr 

Beecher,  selected  and  arranged  by  Rev.  J.  Reeves  Brown. 
We  have  here,  not  the  ordinary  short  selections,  but  fifty-two 
chapters. 

13.  Royal  Truths,  "reported  from  the  spoken  words 
of  Mr.  Beecher."  This  has  passed  through  very  many 
editions,  from   1866  to   1887.     An  anthology. 

14.  Henry  Ward  Beecher 's  Last  Sermons,  preached  in 
Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  after  his  return  from  England, 
October,  1886.     London,  James  Clarke  and  Company,  1887. 


INCIDENTS   AND 

PERSONAL    MEMORIES 

OF    BEECHER 


MR.    BEECHER    IN    PRIVATE    LIFE 
By  Rossiter  W.  Raymond 

Mr.  Beecher's  private  life  was  at  all  times  domi- 
nated by  a  consciousness  of  his  public  functions  as  a 
minister,  and  especially  his  work  as  a  preacher,  with 
which  he  allowed  nothing  to  interfere.  Diet,  rest, 
study,  recreation,  conversation  —  all  were  regulated 
with  reference  to  this.  He  gave  up  attending  the 
Philharmonic  concerts,  then  given  on  Saturday  nights, 
because  his  keen  enjoyment  of  them  excited  and 
exhausted  him,  whereas  his  rule  was  to  rest  before 
his  work  rather  than  afterwards.  P'or  the  same  reason 
he  avoided  hearty  meals,  and  would  not  even  talk 
much,  if  he  could  avoid  it,  on  Saturday  nights  or  other 
occasions  immediately  preceding  the  discharge  of  his 
duty  in  the  pulpit. 

As  I  have  elsewhere  more  fully  explained,  Mr. 
Beecher's  mental  life  had  three  characteristic  and 
recurrent  phases.  First,  and  longest  enduring,  was 
his  habitual  actively  inquiring  and  receptive  mood,  in 
which  he  accumulated  facts,  hints,  impressions  and 
conclusions  as  intellectual  food.  In  this  mood  he 
studied,  watched,  talked  and  pondered.  It  was  the 
atmosphere  in  which  his  sermons  grew  until  they 
were  ripe,  from  the  seeds  planted  in  his  little  pocket 
note-book  or  in  separate  compartments  of  his  memory. 

Then  came  his  creative  mood,  in  which  his  facul- 
ties were  intensely  and   harmoniously  cooperative,  so 

81 


62  menrg  MarO  JBeecber 

that  he  could  flash  forth,  in  a  complete,  comprehensive, 
pictorial  whole,  the  result  of  the  long  accumulation 
of  materials  and  of  many  meditations  thereon.  This 
rarely  lasted  more  than  one  or  two  hours,  and  was 
followed  by  the  third  phase,  a  reaction,  in  which  rea- 
son and  memory  seemed  to  be  resting  in  sleep  while 
the  mind  recovered  its  normal  tone  and  strength.* 


*  After  this  long  lapse  of  time  I  may,  without  impropriety,  relate 
the  following  incident,  hitherto  untold.  During  the  first  public  excite- 
ment over  the  slanderous  personal  charges  brought  against  Mr.  Beecher, 
and  the  investigation  of  them  by  a  committee  of  Plymouth  Church,  it 
was,  of  course,  necessary  that  he  should  prepare  a  complete  statement 
of  facts.  For  this  he  had  to  rely  upon  memory.  His  adversaries  had 
carefully  preserved  all  documents ;  he  had  none. 

To  facilitate  his  preparation  of  this  statement  a  stenographer  was 
employed  to  take  his  oral  narrative,  for  his  subsequent  correction  and 
approval.  But  we  found  that,  after  talking  for  an  hour  or  two  to  the 
stenographer,  he  could  go  no  further  that  day.  To  the  question,  "  What 
happened  next  ?  "  he  would  say  only,  "  I  don't  remember."  And  at  the 
following  session  it  would  sometimes  be  dititicult  to  revive  the  train  of 
thought  or  recollection  thus  suspended. 

This  was  annoying  enough,  in  view  of  the  continual  public  clamor 
for  Mr.  Beecher's  personal  statement  and  the  use  made  by  his  accusers 
of  every  day's  delay.  But  the  statement  was  at  last  finished  and  pub- 
lished; and  nothing  which  it  contained  was  ever  successfully  impugned, 
for  his  memory,  when  active,  was  as  accurate  as  a  photograph.  But 
the  eminent  lawyers  who  represented  him  in  the  subsequent  lawsuit 
were  overwhelmed  with  anxiety,  amounting  to  consternation,  by  the 
thought  that,  upon  the  witness  stand,  their  client  might  exhibit  such 
relapses  in  mental  activity.  "  Good  heavens ! "  said  one  of  them, 
"  what  if  Mr.  Beecher,  under  cross-examination,  should  begin  to  say, 
'  I  don't  remember  ? '  " 

I  think  this  was  the  most  serious  fear  attending  the  conduct  of  his 
case,  in  which,  as  a  young  layman,  I  assisted  the  legal  counsel  and  was 
admitted  to  their  private  consultations.  Mr.  Beecher  alone  seemed  to 
be  free  from  anxiety.  He  felt  sure  of  divine  protection  ;  and  the  rest 
of  us  could  only  pray  that  such  protection  might  be  manifested  in  the 
particular  way  which  seemed  best  to  21s  —  which  is,  I  fancy,  the  fashion 
of  most  of  our  prayers  1  At  all  events,  our  gratitude  and  joy  may  easily 
be  imagined  when  Mr.  Beecher  went  through  several  days  of  direct  and 
cross-examination  without  a  single  lapse  of  memory,  proving  himself  at 
all  points  superior  to  the  art  of  the  eminent  lawyer  who  had  been  spe- 
cially engaged  to  cross-examine  him,  and  maintaining  intact  his  simple, 
truthful  story.  To  us,  who  knew  the  critical  nature  of  this  test  and 
the  mental  habits  which  handicapped  him,  this  seemed  indeed  a 
"special"  providence.     He  took  it  as  an  ordinary  one. 


fn  Private  Xfte  83 

Probably  all  intellectual  workers  know  these  three 
phases,  but  I  have  never  met  another  man  who  so 
thoroughly  understood,  obeyed  and  managed  them. 
Those  of  us  who  are  not  bound  to  be  "in  the  Spirit" 
at  a  given  hour  on  a  given  day,  may  wait  idly  until  the 
Spirit  moves  us.  But  Mr,  Beecher  took  care  to  make 
himself  ready  for  the  needed  inspiration,  and  to  receive 
it  into  a  brain  refreshed,  informed  and  alert. 

It  was  very  frequently  in  his  mood  of  reaction  that 
he  came  into  the  homes  of  such  old  friends  as  could 
understand  and  respect  it,  and  therefore  it  was  seldom 
that  he  became  in  such  circles  the  brilliant  center  of 
conversation.  Many  exceptions  there  were  —  notable 
ones — ^when,  roused  by  some  question,  he  would  pour 
out  upon  two  or  three  entranced  listeners  rhapsodies 
of  eloquence  or  thunders  of  argument  almost  surpass- 
ing, as  it  seemed,  his  public  utterances.  Sometimes, 
after  such  an  outburst,  he  would  suddenly  depart,  say- 
ing with  affected  indignation,  "There,  now  you've  got 
a  good  sermon  that  was  getting  ready  to  come,  and  it 
won't  come  again  ! "  (In  more  than  one  instance  it 
never  did  come  again  ;  the  powder  had  been  burned.) 

On  the  other  hand,  I  have  known  him  to  enter  my 
house  without  a  word,  pass  through  to  the  library,  seat 
himself  there  alone,  take  from  his  pocket  a  handful  of 
unset  precious  stones,*  spread  them  on  a  sheet  of 
white  paper  before  him,  study  them,  arranging  and 
rearranging  them  on  the  paper,  and,  after  half  an  hour, 
gather  them  up  and  depart  as  silently  as  he  had  come. 

*  Amethysts,  topazes,  opals,  etc.  (not  diamonds ;  he  did  not  love 
diamonds,  and  thought  the  "  white  stone  "  of  the  Apocalypse  was  an 
opal),  many  of  them  his  own,  but  more  of  them  lent  him  by  friendly 
lapidaries. 


J 


84  Menr^  MarD  aSeecber 

But  ordinarily  he  was  not  as  tired  as  that.  He 
would  be  ready  for  light,  cheerful  gossip  about  family 
matters,  and,  above  all,  for  the  children  and  their  play, 
in  which  he  loved  to  share,  letting  them  climb  upon 
his  knees  or  ride  upon  his  back.  If  strangers  were 
present,  before  whom  he  might  be  expected  to  "show 
off,"  he  was  very  likely  to  excuse  himself  after  a  short 
call.  But  if  there  was  nobody  to  spoil  the  game  there 
was  no  telling  how  long  it  might  last.  I  remember 
one  evening  when  Mr.  Beecher  was  telling  stories  to 
children  and  grown  folks  alike,  and  bedtime  came  for 
the  smallest  little  boy.  Climbing  reluctantly  up  the 
stairs  the  child  turned  and  shouted  down  into  the 
parlor,  "  O,  Mr.  Beecher,  please  don't  say  anything 
after  I  am  gone  !  "  "Not  one  word  !  "  was  the  reply  ; 
and  Mr.  Beecher  immediately  arose  and  (after  the 
usual  hunt  for  his  hat)  bade  us  all  good-night,  and  went 
out,  slamming  the  front  door,  so  that  his  little  friend 
might  know  he  had  kept  his  promise  ! 

Curiously  enough,  Mr.  Beecher,  so  bold  in  any 
public  or  representative  capacity,  was,  in  private,  shy 
and  bashful.  In  moments  of  strong  personal  feeling 
he  took  refuge  in  silence.  He  told  me  once  (when 
he  was  past  sixty)  that  he  never  entered  without  em- 
barrassment a  room  in  which  he  expected  to  find 
strangers.  "But,"  he  added,  "on  the  platform  I  am 
another  man.  There  I  am  not  afraid  of  anything  or 
anybody.  I  have  a  consciousness  of  command.  If 
there  should  be  an  alarm  of  fire  I  knoiv  that  I  could 
make  the  crowd  obey  me  and  sit  still,  or  go  out 
quietly."  (He  was  right  as  to  that ;  I  have  seen 
him  do  it.) 


fln  Private  Xlfe  85 

Dr.  Lyman  Abbott,  in  his  recent  admirable  book 
on  Mr.  Beecher,  speaks  of  him  as  going  rapidly 
through  books  and  getting  the  heart  out  of  them. 
But  that  was  only  his  way  of  testing  books  before 
deciding  whether  to  read  them.  For  he  was  a  slow 
reader,  even  of  light  literature.  Books  on  science, 
philosophy,  history,  etc.,  he  read  and  reread,  often 
turning  back  to  passages  which  had  been  to  him, 
upon  first  perusal,  impressive  or  suggestive.  In  such 
books  (lent  to  me  after  he  had  read  them)  I  often 
found  heavy  marginal  pencil  marks,  evidently  intended 
simply  to  help  him  in  finding  certain  paragraphs  again. 
I  do  not  remember  (with  one  exception)  any  which 
implied  approval  or  disapproval.  Knowing  his  mental 
attitude  and  method  in  particular  lines  of  study,  I  have 
recognized,  among  the  passages  thus  marked,  some 
which  he  doubted,  some  which  admirably  stated  his 
own  views,  and  some  which  he  doubtless  deemed  funda- 
mentally wrong  and  logically  weak.  But  most  of  the 
marked  paragraphs  were  simply  points  in  the  author's 
arofument.  For  it  was  characteristic  of  him  that  he 
read  such  a  book  to  get  the  author's  standpoint, 
method  and  message. 

In  one  instance  within  my  knowledge  (of  course 
there  may  have  been  others)  Mr.  Beecher  wrote  in  a 
volume  his  opinion  of  it.  It  was  "  Lorna  Doone," 
which  he  had  borrowed  of  me,  and  on  the  title-page 
of  which  I  found,  when  he  returned  it,  these  penciled 
words  : 

This  book  is  like  a  capital  fowl,  somewhat  overstuffed, 
and  a  trifle  too  long  in  the  oven  ;  otherwise,  a  dish  fit  for 
a  king.  H.  w.  b. 


86  Kcnr\:  TMarD  JBeecbcr 

But  it  should  be  noted  that  Mr.  Beecher  read  dif- 
ferent books  for  different  purposes.  Some  simply  in- 
structed him  ;  some  stimulated  him,  suggesting  more 
than  they  said ;  some  refreshed  and  soothed  him ; 
5ome  could  put  him  to  sleep.  And  he  kept  examples 
of  each  sort  always  at  hand,  to  be  used  according  to 
his  mood  or  need. 

One  day,  finding  him  absorbed  in  a  "gorgeous" 
novel  by  Ouida,  I  expressed  my  surprise  that,  being 
so  slow  a  reader,  he  should  waste  time  upon  such  a 
story.  His  reply  was,  "  She  has  a  wonderful  vocab- 
ulary, and  I  am  reading  for  tliaty  It  was  the  ora- 
torical element  (in  itself  a  blemish)  in  Ouida's  style 
that  attracted  him. 

His  own  writing  was  as  impulsive,  fluent  and 
abundant  as  his  speech.  Accustomed  for  so  rrfany 
years  to  throw  off  hasty  "copy"  for  the  printer,  and 
to  write  out  or  leave  unwritten,  as  the  mood  seized 
him,  passages  in  his  sermons,  he  had  come,  apparently, 
to  regard  the  pen  as  a  simple  alternative  of  the 
tongue ;  and  he  wrote  letters,  sometimes  without  date, 
sometimes  without  signature,  sometimes  without  ad- 
dress, sometimes  forgetting  to  finish  them  or  mail 
them,  and  always,  I  think,  without  retaining  copies 
of  them. 

The  following  hitherto  unpublished  letter  may 
serve  as  an  illustration.  It  was  found,  after  Mr. 
Beecher's  death,  among  his  papers.  Nobody  knows 
to  whom  it  was  addressed,  or  whether  it  was  ever 
sent. 

Brooklvn,  May  8th,   1867. 

Dear  Sir :  I  do  not  think  Science,  as  it  ivill  be,  is  with- 
out its  Calvary.     But,  as  it  noiv  is,  in  the  hands  of   Mill, 


ITn  Private  Xlfe  gt 

Spencer,  Huxley,  Tyndall  and,  I  may  add,  Charles  Darwin, 
it  has  gone  only  so  far  as  to  have  lost  the  cross,  and  not 
far  enough  to  have  found  it  again. 

I  am  entirely  confident  that  the  truths  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment are  perfectly  at  one  with  the  truth  of  nature.  Both 
are  divine.  They  will  never  collide  in  any  such  sense  as 
to  be  interchangeably  destructive. 

We  are  in  a  transition.  Such  periods  are  apt  to  be 
barrens  and  deserts  for  religious  feeling.  I  am  anxious 
to  maintain  the  religious  sentiment  and  fervor  of  men 
during  these  changes,  and  that  recasting  of  philosophy 
which  impends.  Yours  truly, 

Henry  Ward  Beecher. 

If  this  letter  was  never  sent,  it  may  be  that 
Mr.  Beecher  was  not  entirely  satisfied  with  its  phrase- 
ology. But  from  my  knowledge  of  him  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  he  meant,  and  simply  forgot,  to  mail 
it.  At  all  events,  it  expresses  substantially  his  own 
solemn  personal  injunction  to  me,  which  I  here  pub- 
licly repeat,  I  think  for  the  first  time  (though  I  have 
repeated  it  in  conversation  heretofore)  : 

When  I  am  gone,  do  not  let  it  be  forgotten  that  my  one 
aim  was  the  winning  of  the  souls  of  men  for  Jesus  Christ ; 
that  I  have  restated  old  doctrines  in  new  language  for  this 
purpose  —  to  make  them  acceptable  to  living  men  —  and 
not  out  of  desire  for  destruction  or  innovation.  My  busi- 
ness has  always  been,  and  will  always  be,  not  to  make 
theology,  but  to  save  men  by  bringing  them  to  Christ. 

This  was  his  habitual  consciousness  and  attitude. 
He  was  a  congenial  associate  in  all  sorts  of  company ; 
but  he  never  "let  himself  down,"  morally,  for  any 
company ;  and  all  who  met  him,  however  informally, 
were  made  to  feel  that  behind  and  above  his  cordial 
fellowship  there  was  an  ever-present  sacred  mission 
and  purpose.     This,  at  least,  was  my  experience.     I 


^  Menrs  imaxt)  meecbcv 

knew  Mr.  Beecher  as  intimately  as  most,  and  in  some 
respects  more  intimately  than  any  of  his  friends  out- 
side of  his  own  family;  and  I  bear  witness  that  no 
degree  of  familiarity  ever  impaired  the  affectionate 
reverence  with  which  I  regarded  him. 


THE    HENRY    WARD    BEECHER    OF    MY 

CHILDHOOD 

By  Rev.  R.  DeW.  Mallary,  Housatonic,  Mass. 

As  I  look  back  upon  my  boyhood  days  in  Plymouth 

Church,  Brooklyn,  the  first  picture  to  come  before  me 

is  the  Sunday  morning  congregation.      Pewholders  had 

to  be  in  their  seats   ten  minutes  before  the  opening 

of  service,  and  we  used  to  make  our  way  to  our  pew 

through  ranks  of  waiting  strangers.     And  what  a  vast, 

expectant  assemblage  it  was  when  John  Zundel  started 

in  on  the  voluntary  ;  a  congregation  never  quite  the 

same,  perhaps  twenty-five  per  cent,  being  "strangers 

within  the  gates."     Pulpit  stairs,  aisles,  second  gallery, 

all  chock-full  and  crowds  standing  about  the  doors. 

The  central  figure  in  it  all,  Mr.  Beecher,  seemed 
perfectly  self-possessed,  and  surveyed  the  assemblage 
with  a  quiet  dignity.  He  had  no  assistant  minister 
then  to  take  the  devotional  part  of  the  worship,  and 
in  this  part  he  was,  indeed,  unique.  Unconventional, 
he  possessed  a  beautiful  sense  of  pulpit  proprieties. 
He  caught  the  ear  of  all  at  the  start  by  low  tones, 
almost  inaudible.  How  deliberately,  reverently,  im- 
pressively he  read  the  Scripture !  And  how  fond  he 
was  of  reading  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  First  Cor- 
inthians !  How  comprehensively,  unctuously,  directly 
he  prayed! — his  prayers  were  litanies,  communions. 
And  such  singing  from  that  immense  congregation  ! 
Will  I  ever  hear  its  like  again  .? 

91 


92  Mcnv^  IClarD  JBcecbcr 

In  sermon-time,  often  lasting  over  an  hour,  my 
attention  flagged  or  wandered.  I  fear  I  counted  the 
bald  heads  in  a  given  row  of  seats,  and  noted  the 
rapidly-flying  stenographer's  pencil,  but  all  the  same 
I  heard  a  good  deal.  Mr.  Beecher's  sermons  were 
canvases ;  he  preached  in  pictures,  and  I  often  was  a 
rapt  little  hearer.  The  congregation  now  clapped  and 
then  cried,  swayed  absolutely  by  the  great  mind  and 
soul  that  throbbed  aloud  a  message  of  truth  and  love 
and  duty  ! 

I  have  many  detached  memories  of  Mr.  Beecher 
and  Plymouth  Church  during  those  early  days.  Mr. 
Beecher's  illustrious  father  sometimes  moved  up  and 
down  our  Sunday-school  aisles,  stopping  here  and 
there  for  a  kindly  word.  There  were  no  Sunday 
horse-cars  in  Brooklyn  then,  and  Mr.  Beecher  advo- 
cated this  "  new  departure,"  bringing  to  an  end  a 
Sabbatic  quiet  that  had  hitherto  reigned  on  the  first 
day  of  the  week  and  incidentally  covering  himself 
with  an  avalanche  of  criticism.  His  leading  opponent 
in  this  matter  thereafter,  it  was  said,  patronized  the 
livery  stables  when  he  had  occasion  to  travel  on  the 
Sabbath.  War  memories,  too,  group  themselves  about 
those  early  days.  I  was  too  young  to  comprehend  all 
I  saw  and  heard,  but  my  father,  who  was  a  stanch 
Democrat,  came  home  from  church  one  day  in  high 
dudgeon.  Mr.  Beecher  had  had  that  morning  in  the 
service  a  slave  in  the  pulpit  with  him,  and  had  kissed 
her  before  the  entire  congregation.  That  was  too 
much  for  my  father,  and  for  a  year  he  went  alone  to 
the  Congregational  church  across  the  street,  where 
William    Alvin    Bartlett    was    then    trying    his    pulpit 


©t  itsn  Cbi[Oboo&  93 

powers.  Needless  to  say  he  came  back,  and  was  to 
the  last  day  of  his  long  life  one  of  Mr.  Beecher's 
warmest  admirers  and  defenders.  During  the  mobs 
in  New  York  a  missile  came  whizzing  through  a  pane 
of  glass  one  evening  while  Plymouth  Church  was  at 
service,  and  we  read  the  next  morning  of  the  cordon 
of  police  that  escorted  Mr.  Beecher  home  that  night, 
while  the  mob  wreaked  its  vengeance  on  the  "abo- 
litionist "  by  painting  his  brownstone  front  with  lamp- 
black. We  boys  went  down  a  few  days  after  to  see 
the  almost  indelible  smut  which  remained  there  for 
many  a  year. 

I  cannot  speak  at  any  length  of  other  "events" 
which  made  an  impression  on  my  boy  mind  :  the  New 
Years'  receptions  at  Mr.  Beecher's  house  to  which 
my  father  always  took  me ;  the  return  of  Mr.  Beecher 
from  Europe  and  Palestine  in  1863,  and  the  disappear- 
ance of  an  old  rampart  sort  of  a  pulpit  to  make  way 
for  the  simple  furniture  made  of  olive-wood  selected 
by  Mr.  Beecher  in  the  Holy  Land ;  the  deeply  im- 
pressive baptismal  services  when  Mr.  Beecher  used  to 
immerse  those  candidates  preferring  that  method  of 
administering  the  rite. 

I  cannot  remember  that  Mr.  Beecher  often  came 
into  our  Sunday-school.  He  certainly  had  no  class. 
Yet  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  he  took  no  in- 
terest in  this  part  of  the  church  work.  His  hand  was 
felt  in  all  the  departments  of  the  parish  life.  All  the 
world  knows  his  fondness  for  flowers,  birds  and  nature. 
Our  Sunday-school  had  a  fountain  in  the  center  of  the 
room.  One  end  of  my  quadrant-shaped  bench  abutted 
on  the  aisle  next  to  that  musical  Jet  d'eau,  and  I  used 


94  Kenrg  Mar&  JBeecber 

to  watch,  between  the  questions,  the  gold  and  silver 
fish  swimming  around  among  the  moss-covered  rocks. 
Around  three  sides  of  the  room  were  galleries  for 
primary  scholars,  Bible  classes  and  "visitors."  The 
visitors'  gallery  was  always  filled.  Underneath  these 
galleries  were  hanging  flower  baskets  and  bird-cages, 
so  that  Sunday  was  the  best  day  of  the  week  and 
Sunday-school  the  eager  anticipation  of  my  week- 
days. 

Mr.  Beecher  came  to  our  sessions  seldom,  but 
when  he  came  he  was  in  his  happiest  mood,  and  cer- 
tainly his  was  the  moving  spirit  behind  those  happy 
Sunday-school  hours.  They  are  among  the  most 
precious  of  childhood's  memories.  They  taught  me 
by  the  inspirations  they  gave  me  —  sometimes  op- 
pressive inspirations  —  to  have  confidence  in  the  sus- 
ceptibility of  every  boy's  and  girl's  soul  to  God. 


Only  a  few  more  days  and  we  shall  be  on  our  way 
to  Peekskill  where  I  will  roll  on  the  grass,  frolic  with  the 
dogs,  rejoice  in  the  flowers,  sit  under  the  big  pine  tree 
and  superintend  laying  out  the  road,  and  we  will  all  have 
a  good  time  generally.  But  having  had  it  I  shall  return 
to  my  church,  ready,  happy  and  eager  to  resume  my  labors, 
and  with  a  heart  all  the  richer  in  love  for  it  and  my  people, 
for  these  few  weeks  of  rest.  —  From  a  letter  of  Mr.  Beecher' s. 


THE    UNDERGRADUATE    DAYS    OF 
HENRY    WARD    BEECHER 

By  Walter  A.  Dyer 

The  story  of  the  college  days  of  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  and  the  tale  of  his  wooing  and  his  winning  are 
one.  It  was  during  his  life  at  Amherst  College,  with 
its  many  interests  and  its  vast  influences  on  his  sub- 
sequent career,  that  he  met,  wooed  and  won  the  woman 
who  was  to  be  his  companion  through  all  the  remark- 
able events  of  his  after  life. 

To  Amherst,  the  Village  Beautiful,  redolent  with 
Indian  traditions  and  tales  of  colonial  strife,  came 
Henry  Ward  Beecher,  three-quarters  of  a  century  ago, 
in  search  of  learning.  He  was  at  that  time  boyish- 
looking  and  a  trifle  diffident,  with  that  awkwardness 
which  comes  with  rapid  growth.  Honest  eyes  and  a 
frank,  open  face,  now  serious,  now  all  mirth,  bespoke 
a  great  soul  which  even  then  stirred  within  him,  and 
which  never  lost  its  youthful  freshness.  Breathing 
in  the  scholarly  atmosphere  of  the  old  institution  with 
the  sweet,  wholesome  air  of  the  Hadley  meadows  and 
the  Pelham  hills,  Beecher  grew  from  boyhood  to  man- 
hood. Years  afterward  he  said,  "  I  owe  more  to  what 
God  has  done  for  Amherst  than  anything  he  ever  did 
for  me." 

Beecher  fitted  at  the  Mt.  Pleasant  Classical  Insti- 
tute in  Amherst,  and  entered  college  in  1830.  There 
were   forty  students    in   his   class.      The   college   was 

95 


96  Mcnr^  IdarO  JBeecbcr 

then  but  nine  years  old,  small  and  poorly  endowed, 
but  the  chairs  of  instruction  were  filled  by  scholars 
and  men  of  strong  personality.  Rev.  Dr.  Heman 
Humphrey,  a  renowned  theologian,  was  president. 

Beecher's  academic  career  at  Amherst  was  a  pecul- 
iar one,  and  his  attitude  toward  the  prescribed  course 
of  study  has  given  rise  to  some  controversy.  There 
is  a  tradition  current  among  the  undergraduates  which 
certain  professors,  and  among  them  the  late  Prof.  W.  S. 
Tyler,  in  his  "  History  of  Amherst  College,"  have  in 
vain  endeavored  to  explain  away,  that  throughout  his 
course  Beecher  stood  at  the  foot  of  his  class.  As 
direct  evidence  on  this  point.  Rev.  S.  Hopkins  Emery, 
of  Taunton,  Massachusetts,  one  of  Beecher's  class- 
mates at  Amherst  College,  said,  in  a  letter  to  the 
present  chronicler : 

Beecher,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  paid  little  attention  to  the 
prescribed  course  of  study  in  college,  so  that  he  might  about 
as  well  have  been  elsewhere  so  far  as  study  in  the  regular 
course  was  concerned.  I  think  he  regretted  it  afterward. 
Of  course  he  had  brain  enough  to  have  easily  led  the  class, 
if  his  ambition  and  taste  had  so  dictated ;  but  the  fact  that 
he  was  one  of  the  few  who  failed  of  any  Commencement 
appointment  proves  what  I  have  said  about  it.  Of  course 
he  was  not  idle.     He  thought  and  read  much. 

Beecher  himself  said  that  he  stood  next  the  head 
of  his  class  only  once  in  his  course,  on  a  day  when 
the  class  was  arranged  in  a  circle. 

Beecher  was,  however,  the  leading  debater  in  col- 
lege, and  his  devotion  to  this  exercise  proved  invalu- 
able training  for  his  life-work.  It  was  in  the  prepara- 
tion for  one  of  his  debates  on  the  question  of  African 
colonization  that  the  conviction  of  the  human  rie:hts  of 


Mis  *QlnJ)ergraDuate  ©a^s  9? 

the  Southern  slaves  first  came  to  him.  Lewis  Tappan, 
a  classmate,  said  of  him  :  "  In  logic  and  class  debates 
no  one  could  approach  him.  I  listened  to  his  flow  of 
impassioned  eloquence  in  those  my  youthful  days  with 
wonder  and  admiration."  Rev.  Mr.  Emery  remem- 
bered that  Henry  Clay  visited  Amherst  once  during 
those  days,  and  some  of  the  students  presented  him 
with  a  Bible.  Beecher  made  the  presentation  speech, 
for  no  one  else  was  considered  so  well  fitted  to  do 
it,  and  the  smooth-faced  young  fellow  won  the  great 
statesman's  praise. 

Beecher's  written  essays  also  attracted  consider- 
able attention,  chiefly  because  of  their  originality  of 
thought ;  but  his  chief  study  was  nature  and  her 
moods,  and  frequently  in  his  sermons  afterward  he 
referred  to  incidents  which  occurred  and  impressions 
which  he  received  while  on  long,  solitary  tramps 
among  the  hills  and  woods  which  lie  about  the 
beautiful  New  England  town.  Still,  he  was  always 
appreciative  of  the  advantages  of  his  college.  He 
once  said,  long  afterward,  in  public  reference  to  those 
days  of  endeavor,  that  he  owed  his  inspiration  for 
manly  living  to  three  persons  —  his  dead  mother, 
whose  spirit  seemed  ever  near  him  as  a  guardian 
angel ;  a  negro  servant  who  chopped  wood  and  sang 
hymns  in  his  father's  shed ;  and  the  professor  of 
mathematics   in   Amherst    College. 

Beecher  at  one  time  took  up  the  study  of  phre- 
nology, and,  in  company  with  a  classmate,  Orson  S. 
Fowler,  went  about  among  the  neighboring  towns 
lecturing.  This  interest,  however,  soon  gave  place  to 
that  in  the  cause  of  temperance,  for  which  he  became 
an  active  worker  and  an  eloquent  lecturer. 


98  Kenrg  IdarJ)  36eec  ber 

He  was  a  contributor  to  The  Shrine,  the  under- 
graduate publication,  was  a  prominent  member  of 
the  Athenian  debating  society,  and  was  interested  in 
several  departments  of  college  activity.  Soon  after 
his  graduation,  in  1837,  he  became  one  of  the  honor- 
ary charter  members  of  the  Amherst  chapter  of  the 
Alpha  Delta  Phi  fraternity, 

Beecher's  love  of  fun  was  irresistible,  and  the  few 
anecdotes  which  are  told  of  him  are  characteristic. 
They  are  most  of  them  too  well  known  to  need 
repetition  here.  His  poverty,  his  queer  room,  with 
its  round  table,  and  other  circumstances  of  his  college 
life  have  often  been  recounted.  At  one  time  he  be- 
came the  champion  of  his  class  in  an  interclass  dis- 
pute, and  so  won  the  enmity  of  a  Junior  who  after- 
wards became  a  famous  lawyer  and  voluntarily  took 
active  part  in  the  case  against  Beecher  at  the  time 
of  the  scandal  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn,  and 
well-nigh  had  his  revenge. 

And  so  the  days  flitted  by  in  beautiful  Amherst. 
A  letter  written  by  Beecher  to  his  sister  during  his 
Junior  year,  which  is  one  of  the  few  of  this  period 
which  have  been  preserved,  is  to  be  found  among  the 
memorabilia  in  the  college  library  at  Amherst.  It 
gives  an  insight  into  many  of  his  thoughts  and  senti- 
ments. He  was  a  young  man  of  moods,  and  highly 
susceptible  to  religious  excitement  and  depression. 
At  one  time  the  reaction  from  a  religious  revival  in 
the  college  threw  him  into  a  period  of  spiritual  gloom. 
He  found  plenty  of  precept,  but  not  the  sympathy 
which  he  sought.  He  was  left  for  a  long  time  to  fight 
it  out  almost  alone,  with  but  one  companion  who  was 


tHls  TllndergraOuate  Wa^s  99 

able  to  understand,  one  Moody  Harrington,  whom  he 
remembered  long  afterward  with  affectionate  gratitude. 
Then  came  the  love  of  a  good  woman,  and  the  skies 
cleared. 

Beecher's  most  intimate  friend  in  college  was 
E.  W.  Bullard,  who  roomed  with  him  for  several 
terms.  He  was  the  son  of  Rev.  Artemus  Bullard, 
and  his  home  was  in  West  Sutton,  Massachusetts.' 
He  had  two  brothers  who  were  afterwards  eminent 
in  their  profession  :  Rev.  Artemus  Bullard,  Jr.,  long 
a  leading  Presbyterian  clergyman  in  St.  Louis,  who 
met  a  sad  death  in  a  dreadful  railroad  disaster  near 
that  city  ;  and  Rev.  Asa  Bullard,  in  his  day  one  of 
the  best-known  Congregational  ministers  in  New  Eng- 
land. Young  Bullard  and  Henry  Beecher  formed 
one  of  those  close  college  friendships  which  never 
wear  out. 

The  two  were  just  out  of  their  Freshman  year 
when,  together  with  another  classmate,  they  walked 
from  Amherst  to  West  Sutton,  fifty  miles,  to  spend 
their  spring  vacation  at  Dr.  Bullard's.  Mrs.  Bullard 
was  on  the  porch  to  greet  them,  and  with  her  was  her 
daughter  Eunice,  a  pretty,  red-cheeked  country  girl, 
affectionate  and  modest.  As  she  stood  there,  with 
the  afternoon  sun  gilding  her  hair,  she  presented  a 
picture  which  remained  in  Beecher's  heart  for  many 
a  day. 

He  was  lonely  and  troubled,  and  nothing  could 
have  been  more  welcome  than  that  quiet  New  Eng- 
land home  and  the  sympathy  of  a  gentle  maiden. 
Beecher  was  only  a  boy,  and  Eunice,  though  ten 
months   his    senior,   was    an    unsophisticated    country 


100  Menrs  MarO  JBeecber 

girl.  Yet  they  talked  of  grave  matters,  and  Beecher 
did  his  best  to  appear  favorably  in  her  eyes.  When, 
one  evening,  he  made  a  slip,  it  worried  him  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  fault.  They  were  talking,  the  three 
classmates,  about  a  friend  whose  recent  engagement 
they  did  not  approve. 

"She  can't  sing  a  note,"  said  Beecher,  "and  who 
would  want  a  girl  that  couldn't  sing  .-* " 

Later  in  the  evening  some  one  asked  Eunice  to 
sing  and  she  declined,  saying  that  it  was  not  one 
of  her  accomplishments.  That  night  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  went  to  bed  very  unhappy. 

But  the  days  drifted  quickly  by,  and  Beecher  went 
back  to  college  with  a  newer  purpose  and  a  lighter 
heart.  And  when  at  last  he  spoke  of  love  it  was  all 
very  quaint  and  very  awkward,  but  beautiful  in  its 
sincerity.  During  the  summer  and  fall  after  their 
first  meeting  Eunice  taught  school  in  Clappville, 
Massachusetts.  Henry  secured  a  position  in  North- 
bridge  soon  afterward,  and  was  able  to  see  her  some- 
times. During  his  winter  vacation  he  went  to  live 
with  her  aunt  in  Whiting's  Village,  where  she  was 
staying,  ostensibly  to  help  her  in  Latin,  though  she 
knew  more  of  the  classics  than  he. 

Then  Eunice  said,  quietly,  "  Why,  I  can't  sing, 
and  only  a  short  time  since  you  said  you  would  never 
marry  a  woman  who  could  not  sing." 

Henry  laughed. 

"Oh,  that  was  six  months  ago,  and  I  have  changed 
my  mind." 

"  And  in  six  months  more  you  may  change  it 
again,"  said  she. 


Mis  TllnOcrgraOuatc  Da^s  loi 

"  No,  I  changed  it  the  minute  you  said  you  never 
sang,"  he  answered.  "There  is  no  fear  of  my  chang- 
ing it  again." 

And  her  heart  told  her  that  he  spoke  true. 

That  was  January  2,  1832.  Henry  was  not  a  youth 
to  delay  matters.  The  next  Saturday  he  went  to 
West  Sutton  and  told  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Bullard  what  had 
happened.  The  father  was  angry  and  the  mother 
grieved. 

"Why,  you  are  a  couple  of  babes,"  said  Dr.  Bullard, 
and  Henry  could  only  blush  and  stammer.  But  at  last 
the  parents  were  won  over  by  his  earnest  appeal. 

The  course  of  love  ran  not  wholly  smooth,  even 
then.  Beecher  had  no  money,  and  he  longed  to  show 
his  young  fiancee  some  material  token  of  his  love. 
He  worked  hard  teaching  school  at  West  Sutton  and 
delivering  temperance  lectures.  For  one  of  these  he 
received  five  dollars.  With  this  he  purchased  a  copy 
of  Baxter's  "Saints'  Rest"  for  Eunice  —  a  gift  some- 
what uncommon  in  these  days  of  violets  and  bonbons. 
During  one  vacation  he  walked  all  the  way  to  Brattle- 
boro,  Vermont,  where  he  received  the  enormous  sum 
of  ten  dollars  for  a  lecture.  A  ring  was  bought  with 
this,  which  served  both  as  an  engagement  and  a 
wedding  gift. 

Life  had  now  a  new  meaning  for  Beecher,  and 
when  he  became  one  of  the  great  names  in  American 
history  he  loved  to  look  back  to  those  early,  hard, 
sweet  days  when  he  was  an  undergraduate  at  Amherst 
—  and  in  love. 


Statue  of  Henry  IVard  Beec/ier,  m  Brooklyn,  by  /.  Q.  A.  Ward 


MR.   BEECHER   AND   THE  TWO   PLYMOUTH 

BOYS 

By  Edward  Bok 

It  is  a  popular  impression  that  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  had  little  idea  of  the  value  of  money  —  that 
he  let  it  slip  through  his  fingers.  This  was  true,  in 
a  sense.  And  yet  I  remember  an  instance  that  will, 
perhaps,  illustrate  that  money  did  have  a  meaning  to 
him  under  certain  conditions. 

A  friend  of  mine  and  I  had  induced  Mr.  Beecher 
to  write  a  weekly  article  dealing  with  current  events, 
which  we  were  to  publish  simultaneously  in  a  number 
of  newspapers  —  a  "syndicate,"  in  other  words.  He 
was  very  skeptical  of  the  result.  "  No  one  has  ever 
yet  succeeded  in  making  money  out  of  my  supposed 
literary  work,"  he  said,  "and  you  won't."  But  we 
persisted.  We  had  all  the  confidence  of  youth.  We 
agreed  to  pay  Mr.  Beecher  a  sum  of  three  figures  per 
week.  We  were  two  of  his  boys  —  his  "Plymouth 
boys" — and,  of  course,  he  knew  that  the  amount  we 
agreed  to  pay  him  was  considerable  —  for  us. 

When  the  first  article  had  been  written  we  broue:ht 
him  our  first  check.  He  looked  at  it  quizzically  and 
then  at  us.  Finally  he  said,  "Thank  you."  He  took 
a  pin  and  pinned  the  check  to  his  desk.  There  it 
remained.  The  following  week  he  wrote  another  arti- 
cle, and  we  gave  him  another  check.  He  pinned  that 
up  over  the  other. 

103 


104  "Hcm^  MarD  J6cecber 

"  I  like  to  look  at  them,  you  know,"  was  his  only 
explanation  as  he  saw  my  look  of  curiosity. 

The  third  check  was  treated  in  the  same  way,  and 
when  we  handed  him  the  fourth  one  morning,  and  he 
was  pinning  it  up  over  the  others,  he  asked, 

"  When  do   you  get  your   money  from   the   news- 


papers 


We  told  him  we  were  sending  out  bills  that  morn- 
ing for  the  four  letters  constituting  a  month's  service. 

A  fortnight  passed,  and  one  day  Mr.  Beecher 
asked, 

"  Well,  how  are  the  checks  coming  in  ?  " 

"Very  well,"  we  assured  him. 

"  Suppose  you  let  me  see  how  much  you've  got 
in,"  he  suggested  one  morning,  and  we  brought  the 
accounts  to  him. 

"You  do  not  get  quite  so  much  out  of  it  as  I  do," 
was  his  comment.  We  told  him  we  didn't  expect  to ; 
that  it  would  pay  us  well  if  we  got  half  as  much,  and 
that  we  would  get  more  as  the  service  grew. 

"That's  very  interesting,"  he  said.  "How  much 
have  you  in  the  bank.''" 

We  told  him  our  balance  less  the  checks  we  gave 
to  him. 

"  But  I  haven't  turned  them  in  yet,"  he  explained. 
"Anyhow,  you  have  gotten  in  enough  to  meet  the 
checks  you  have  given  me  and  a  profit  besides,  haven't 
you .'' " 

We  assured  him  we  had. 

Then  taking  his  bank-book  from  a  drawer,  he  took 
down  the  six  checks  pinned  on  his  desk,  wrote  a 
deposit  slip,  and  handing  the  book  to  me  said, 


Zbe  :SSeecbcr  IRifles  Cburcb  105 

"Just  hand  that  in  at  the  bank  as  you  go  by, 
will  you  ? " 

I  was  very  young  then,  and  Mr.  Beecher's  methods 
of  financiering  seemed  to  me  quite  in  line  with  current 
notions  of  his  lack  of  business  knowledge.  But  as 
the  years  rolled  on  the  incident  took  on  a  new  phase  — 
such  a  strong,  magnificent  phase ! 

It  seemed  so  inexplicable  then  ;  it  is  so  beautifully 
considerate  now.  I  did  not  thank  him  then ;  I  wish 
I  could  now. 


THE    BEECHER    RIFLES    CHURCH 

By  C.  M.  Harger,  Abilene,  Kansas 

Out  on  the  Kansas  prairie,  at  Wabaunsee,  not 
many  miles  from  the  geological  center  of  the  United 
States,  stands  a  stone  church  that  is  a  memorial  to 
the  patriotism  of  one  of  the  world's  greatest  preachers, 
Henry  Ward  Beecher,  and  his  congregation,  and  to  a 
devotion  to  the  cause  of  freedom  that  makes  the  place 
twice  hallowed.  It  is  also  a  monument  to  the  bravery 
of  Christian  pioneers  in  a  sense  possessed  by  no  other 
structure  in  the  West. 

Each  spring  the  people  of  the  little  prairie  com- 
munity celebrate  the  anniversary  of  the  building  of 
the  church,  and  with  singing,  prayer  and  addresses 
recall  the  story  of  its  beginning,  a  story  as  romantic 
as  many  famous  in  history.  It  has  an  inspiration,  too, 
for  the  believer,  in  that  it  tells  of  the  triumph  of  a 
strong,  brave  faith  and  the  upbuilding  of  a  sturdy, 
patriotic  Christianity. 


A  Letter  of  Mr.  Bcecher's 


'^r/^c^  c^>i^^  ^o./'sy'/. 


108  Menrs  THIlarD  36eecbcr 

In  1856,  when  the  interest  in  the  Nebraska-Kansas 
Bill  was  at  its  height  and  the  New  England  States 
were  more  than  usually  awake  to  the  importance  of 
the  new  territory  being  a  free  state,  a  meeting  was 
held  at  New  Haven  to  enroll  men  to  go  to  the  new 
country  to  live  and  to  fight.  Henry  Ward  Beecher 
made  a  stirring  address.  At  the  close  it  was  an- 
nounced that  one  hundred  men  had  joined  the  party, 
but  that,  while  they  were  well  prepared  to  dig  and 
plow,  they  were  not  in  shape  to  fight. 

Professor  Silliman,  of  Yale  College,  rose  and  sub- 
scribed twenty-five  dollars  to  buy  one  rifle,  and  urged 
that  the  colonists  be  fully  armed  before  they  set  out. 

A  thrilling  scene  followed.  Beecher,  then  at  the 
zenith  of  his  power  and  with  all  the  eloquence  of  his 
best  days,  took  the  rostrum  and  promised  to  see  that 
half  the  rifles  were  furnished  from  his  own  cono;reo:a- 
tion.  He  blessed  the  new  plans  and  bade  the  men 
Godspeed.  In  a  few  days  he  sent  guns  for  every  man, 
over  six  hundred  dollars  having  been  subscribed  by 
his  church  for  the  purpose.  Along  with  the  guns 
were  a  Bible  and  a  hymn-book  for  each  colonist. 

On  the  last  day  of  March  they  took  their  way 
toward  the  setting  sun,  going  down  the  streets  of 
New  Haven  watched  by  thousands.  It  was  as  fine 
a  body  of  men  as  ever  started  for  the  new  lands  — 
doctors,  lawyers,  merchants,  teachers  and  preachers  — 
and  every  one  carried  on  his  shoulder  a  rifle,  in  his 
pocket  a  hymn-book  and  a  Bible,  and  in  his  heart  a 
firm  determination  to  wield  a  power  for  freedom  in 
the  wilderness,   no  matter  what  the  cost. 

The   journey   was    long   and    dangerous,    but    they 


tlbe  JSeecber  IRlftes  Cburcb  109 

took  their  way  across  the  Mississippi,  on  into  the 
prairies  and  up  the  valley  of  the  Kaw. 

On  the  way  they  formed  a  cooperative  organization 
and  bought  shovels,  axes  and  other  tools  with  which 
to  fit  themselves  and  their  families,  who  were  to  come 
after,  with  homes. 

Each  Sabbath  the  preacher  who  was  chosen  as 
their  pastor  read  the  inspiring  words  given  them  with 
the  rifles  by  Mr.  Beecher  when  they  started  West  : 

Let  these  arms  hang  above  your  doors  as  the  old 
Revolutionary  muskets  do  in  many  New  England  homes. 
May  your  children  in  another  generation  look  upon  them 
with  pride  and  say,  "Our  fathers'  courage  saved  this  fair 
land  from  slavery  and  blood."  Every  morning's  breeze  shall 
catch  the  blessings  of  our  prayers  and  roll  them  westward 
to  your  prairie  homes.  May  your  sons  be  large-hearted  as 
the  heavens  above  your  heads ;  may  your  daughters  fill  the 
land  as  the  flowers  do  the  prairies,  only  sweeter  and  fairer 
than  they.  You  will  not  need  to  use  arms  when  it  is  known 
that  you  have  them.  It  is  the  essence  of  slavery  to  be 
arrogant  before  the  weak  and   cowardly  before  the  strong. 

These  words  are  also  read  at  the  annual  meeting:s 
in  commemoration  of  the  coming  of  the  brave  pioneers 
to  the  plains. 

The  Beecher  Rifles  colony,  as  it  was  called,  had 
able  men  in  it.  More  than  a  score  of  Yale  Collee-e 
diplomas  went  along  with  the  rifles  and  Bibles.  RevS- 
Harvey  Brown,  the  first  pastor,  held  meetings  in  a 
grove  and  later  in  a  tent.  Once  there  was  an  alarm 
of  Indians  during  a  service.  Hastily  the  hymn-books 
were  exchanged  for  rifles,  and  away  the  congregation 
went  to  defend  the  homes  and  families.  The  raid  was 
stopped  and  the  colony  saved.  Then  there  was  a 
meetins:  of  thankfulness. 


110 


Menr^  MarD  JScecbcr 


In  1862  they  built  the  church  that  yet  stands  a 
monument  to  the  devotion  of  the  early  days.  It  is 
rude  in  architecture  and  plain  in  all  its  belongings. 
But  it  is  the  incarnation  of  the  pioneer  spirit,  and  in 
it  are  still  held  meetings  where  attend  many  of  the 
original  pioneers,  now  getting  well  along  the  pathway 
of  life.      Rev.  F.  D.  Jackson   is  the  present   pastor. 


Beecher  Rifles   Church,  IValiauiisdc,  Kan. 


The  fate  of  the  colony  was  of  constant  interest  to 
Beecher,  and  he  sent  many  messages  to  the  toilers 
on  the  prairie.  The  spirit  that  animated  the  colonists 
spread  over  New  England,  and  the  emigrant  aid  soci- 
eties and  the  colonies  that  took  their  westward  way 
were  to  some  extent  followers  of  this  movement.  The 
anti-slavery  movement  was  typified  by  the  bravery  of 
this  company,  and  the  high  character  of  the  colonists 


?H(s  lL>ale  lectures  ill 

that  led  in  the  struggle  of  the  West  for  freedom  was 
shown  by  the  men  who  went  into  the  peril  of  the 
long  journey  bearing  rifles  and  Bibles. 

The  West  has  many  such  examples  of  religious 
earnestness  that  won  honor  and  position  when  the 
need  of  the  new  lands  was  great.  It  was  because 
of  such  sentiments  then  that  there  is  now  so  firm  a 
foundation  for  the  schools  and  churches  of  the  plains. 
It  was  a  right  beginning,  and,  while  there  was  often 
a  possibility  of  avoiding  use  of  the  rifles,  the  fact  that 
vigor  could  be  used  if  needed  made  the  respect  for  the 
colonists  the  greater. 

The  little  stone  church  standing  out  on  the  prairies 
teaches  a  lesson  of  faith  and  courage.  Of  such  ma- 
terial as  its  builders  was  the  foundation  of  freedom 
laid. 


MR.    BEECHER'S    YALE    LECTURES 
By  Prof.  George  P.  Fisher 

Mr.  Beecher  lectured  on  "Preaching"  in  the 
Divinity  School  at  Yale  for  three  consecutive  years, 
on  the  foundation  established  by  his  parishioner  and 
close  friend,  Mr.  Henry  W.  Sage.  No  doubt  it  was 
Mr.  Sage's  admiration  of  Mr.  Beecher's  gifts  as  a 
preacher,  and  wish  that  young  men  looking  forward 
to  the  ministry  might  acquaint  themselves  with  his 
characteristic  methods  and  peculiar  charm,  that  led 
to  the  endowment  of  the  Lyman  Beecher  Lectureship. 
The  prolonged  task  was  fulfilled  by  Mr.  Beecher  with 
not  the  smallest  sign  of  weariness  on  his  part,  or  the 
least  waning  of  interest  on  the  part  of  the  audiences 


112  Menrs  1Ular&  JBeecbcr 

that  flocked  to  the  Marquand  Chapel  to  listen  to  him. 
He  spoke  with  no  other  written  aid  than  brief  notes 
jotted  on  pieces  of  paper  hardly  larger  than  the  palm 
of  his  hand.  All  who  heard  him  —  the  younger  theo- 
logues  and  the  older  professors  and  pastors  —  felt  that 
the  speaker  combined  in  himself,  with  the  talents, 
seldom  surpassed,  of  an  orator,  the  genius  of  a  poet  — 
albeit  he  did  not  compose  verses  —  and  of  a  humorist, 
and  was  a  speaker  whom  it  cost  no  effort  to  move 
his  auditors  to  tears  or  to  laughter. 

Mr.  Beecher's  lectures,  not  being  written,  were 
taken  down  shorthand  in  the  delivery  of  them,  and 
owing  to  the  pressure  of  his  occupations  they  were 
given  to  the  press  without  revision.  Notwithstanding 
this  disadvantage,  they  are,  as  printed,  characterized 
by  lucid  arrangement  of  the  contents,  and  they  are 
marked  by  luminous  statement  and  careful  discrimi- 
nation. He  told  the  young  men  that  the  ideal  of  a 
true  Christian  preacher  is  "  to  take  the  great  truths 
of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ's  teachings,  and  the  love  of 
God  to  the  human  race,  and  make  them  a  part  of  his 
own  personal  experience,  so  that  when  he  speaks  to 
men  it  shall  not  be  he  alone  that  speaks,  but  God  in 
him."  Fitly  mated  with  this  saying  is  the  most  excel- 
lent opening  discourse  of  Phillips  Brooks  in  Jiis  Yale 
lectures.  Mr.  Beecher  pointed  out  to  the  theological 
pupils  before  him  another  prime  necessity  in  their 
calling  :  "  A  part  of  your  preparation  for  the  Christian 
ministry  consists  in  such  a  ripening  of  your  disposition 
that  you  yourselves  shall  be  exemplars  of  what  you 
preach."  They  must  live  by  faith  —  "the  sense  of 
the    infinite    and    the    invisible."       He    declared    that 


me  13alc  Xccturcs  lis 

power  to  be  of  priceless  value  which  he  said  that  he 
had  derived  by  inheritance  from  his  mother  —  the 
power  "to  see  the  unseeable,"  "to  realize  things" 
not  present  to  the  senses. 

This  reference  to  his  mother  brings  to  mind  the 
habit  of  Mr.  Beecher  to  interweave  not  so  very  in- 
frequently, in  lectures  and  sermons,  allusions  to  his 
kinsfolk — incidents  relating  to  his  father,  to  a  brother, 
or  some  other  near  kinsman.  These  anecdotes  some- 
times bordered  on  the  jocose,  and  might  pass  the 
limits  of  a  reserve  as  to  domestic  concerns  which  is 
generally  considered  becoming.  There  was  a  deep 
well  of  tenderness  and  pathos  in  the  great  preacher's 
heart.  But  this  precious  endowment  is  not  always 
coincident  with  faultless  refinement.  Of  this  fact 
there  are  numerous  examples  ;  Martin  Luther  is  one 
signal  instance.  The  oratory  of  Mr.  Beecher,  with 
its  fulness  of  energy  and  warmth,  was  thought  by  not 
over-fastidious  critics  to  touch  at  times  the  fringfe,  at 
least,  of  vulgarity.  Matthew  Arnold,  who  at  least 
learned  to  estimate  his  merit  justly,  was  tempted  to 
style  him  "a  heated  barbarian."  He  was  led  in  his 
ardor,  at  times,  to  intermingle  with  his  oratory  the 
extraneous  leaven  of  mimicry,  failing  thus  to  keep 
apart  the  provinces  of  the  orator  and  the  actor. 

Mr.  Beecher  in  his  Yale  lectures  gave  sufficient 
evidence  of  that  ability  to  distinguish  between  things 
that  differ,  and  to  deal  with  the  distinctions  and 
problems  of  philosophy,  which  proved  that  he  was 
no  stranger  to  culture  in  the  region  of  abstract 
thought.  He  showed  a  facility  in  putting  to  a  homi- 
letic    use    his    acquisitions    there.       His    exaggerated 


114  1Hcnr\>  IXHarS  JBeccber 

valuation  of  phrenology  carried  with  it  the  custom 
of  availing  himself  of  its  not  inconvenient  classifica- 
tion of  mental  qualities  and  functions.  Undeniably 
it  would  have  been  a  source  of  increased  power  had 
Mr.  Beecher,  with  the  actual  development  of  his  native 
faculties,  his  fertility  in  thought  and  imagination,  and 
the  knowledge  that  he  gathered  from  varied  sources, 
blended  a  more  complete  and  rigorous  discipline  dur- 
ing the  years  of  study  and  preparation  for  his  career  — 
very  brilliant  and  successful  in  many  direcftions  though 
it  was. 

Certainly  in  the  pretty  long  list  of  the  lecturers  on 
the  Lyman  Beecher  foundation,  comprising  so  many 
eminent  names,  American  and  foreign,  none —  not 
even  Brooks,  or  Dale,  or  Taylor  —  were  heard  with 
more  eagerness,  none  whose  teachings  gave  more 
satisfaction  when  they  were  uttered,  or  have  been 
longer  retained  in  memory.  The  robust  figure  of  the 
captivating  orator,  as  he  stood  on  the  platform  at 
the  side  of  the  desk  and  poured  out  of  a  heart  and 
mind  overflowing  with  thought  and  feeling  —  all  seem- 
ing to  be  the  inspiration  of  the  moment  —  a  stream 
of  wisdom  and  wit  —  that  image,  one  may  be  sure, 
never  perished  from  the  recollections  of  the  successive 
generations  of  students  who  prized  so  highly  the  privi- 
lege of  hearing  him  and  of  proposing  to  him  on  the 
spot  questions  to  be  instantly  answered  in  pertinent 
replies,   seasoned  with   pleasantry. 


A    YOUNG    THEOLOGUE'S    IMPRESSIONS 
OF    BEECHER 

By  Rev.  Hugh  Pedley,  Montreal 
Mv  first  memory  of  the  name  of  Beecher  goes 
back  to  my  boyhood  in  Newfoundland,  when  we  caught 
echoes  of  the  war  of  the  secession  and  heard  men 
speak  in  the  same  breath  of  Lincohi,  Grant  and 
Beecher.  My  first  sight  of  the  great  preacher  was 
in  1873,  when  he  gave  an  address  in  old  Zion  Church, 
Montreal,  on  the  occasion  of  the  opening  of  the  ses- 
sion of  the  Congregational  college.  Our  little  band 
of  students  was  there  in  the  front  pews  and  he  spoke 
to  us,  unconscious  of  the  rest  of  the  audience.  We 
felt  the  power  of  the  man's  personality  and  the  mag- 
nificence of  his  sorrow,  for  it  was  the  time  when  his 
o-ood  name  was  under  menace,  as  he  said  : 

"  Young  men,  I  have  seen  much  of  life,  I  have 
known  men  who  have  achieved  success  as  bankers, 
statesmen,  warriors,  actors,  but  I  am  here  to  tell  you 
that  had  I  my  life  to  live  over  again  I  would  choose 
no  other  path  than  the  one  along  which  I  have  come, 
that  of  a  minister  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ." 

My  next  contact  was  during  the  Christmas  vaca- 
tion of  1876.  Sunday  morning  found  me  one  of  the 
great  and  expectant  throng  of  worshipers  in  Plymouth 
Church.  As  the  service  in  Trinity  Church,  Boston, 
under  the  leadership  of  Phillips  Brooks,  was  the  acme 
of  that  solemnity,  reverence  and  splendor  of  which  a 

115 


116  Mcncs  TlfilarD  JBcccber 

liturgical  worship  is  capable,  so  this  service  in  Plym- 
outh Church,  conducted  by  Mr.  Beecher,  was  the 
highest  expression  of  the  dignified  freedom,  joyous- 
ness  and  direct  touch  of  the  human  upon  the  divine 
which  may  be  found  in  a  worship  that  dispenses  with 
formal  ritual.  The  prayers  were  the  speech  of  a  child 
to  its  father,  the  plea  of  a  friend  for  his  friends,  the 
supplication  of  a  patriot  for  his  country. 

The  sermon  lasted  hardly  more  than  an  hour.  It 
was  an  argument  to  prove  that  in  human  life  the 
joyous  element  predominates ;  but  the  argument, 
which  in  the  hands  of  some  men  would  have  been 
bare  and  hard  as  a  train  track  in  a  Pennsylvania 
colliery,  was,  under  his  treatment,  a  pathway  bordered 
with  flowers,  glistening  with  dew,  and  opening  up 
glimpses  of  the  vastness  of  the  ocean  and  the  sub- 
limity of  mountain  crests.  It  was  my  somewhat 
unique  experience  to  hear  Mr.  Beecher  make  use  of 
a  quotation,  and  this,  too,  as  an  introduction  to  his 
sermon.        This  was  the  quotation  : 

Lord,  what  a  wretched  land  is  this 
That  yields  us  no  supply, 
No  cheering  fruits,  no  wholesome  trees 
Nor  streams  of  living  joy  1 

And  then  the  comment.  "The  man  that  wrote  that 
didn't  deserve  to  have  any."  A  gentle  ripple  of 
smiles  passed  over  the  faces  of  the  people,  and  by 
the  time  that  had  vanished  the  preacher  was  fully 
under  way  in  the  great  optimistic  argument  which 
formed  the  backbone  of  his  sermon.  A  day  or  so 
before  I  left  Montreal,  the  pastor  of  Zion  Church  had 
suddenly  lost  his  young  wife.     As  I  sat  in  Plymouth 


Bn  Evening  IHour  at  "Hie  'Home  ai7 

Church  that  Sunday  morning  and  shared  in  the  warmth 
and  uplift  of  the  service,  the  wish  suddenly  arose  in 
my  heart  that  the  stricken  man  might  be  within  these 
walls.  And  whom  should  I  see  the  next  Sunday  morn- 
ing, at  the  close  of  the  service,  but  the  bereaved  young 
pastor  in  one  of  the  side  seats,  and  Mr.  Beecher  with 
his  arm  affectionately  thrown  around  him  and  speak- 
ing such  words  of  sympathy  as  only  he  could  speak. 

It  was  my  privilege  one  Sunday  morning  to  have 
a  few  minutes'  conversation  with  Mr.  Beecher.  I  was 
a  theological  student  full  of  doubts.  What  I  said 
I  do  not  remember,  but  my  listener  at  once  took  in 
the  situation.  "You  may  have  your  doubts,"  he  said, 
"about  inspiration,  the  atonement  and  future  punish- 
ment, but  there  is  one  thing  you  cannot  doubt,  and  it 
is  this,  that  men  need  building  up  in  spiritual  man- 
hood, and  the  New  Testament  is  of  all  books  the  one 
best  fitted  for  that  work."  When  I  said  that  I  envied 
him  his  faith,  his  vivid  consciousness  of  the  Unseen, 
he  answered  me  very  quietly  and  gravely.  "That," 
he  said,   "is  a  thing  that  grows." 


AN  EVENING  HOUR  AT  HENRY  WARD 

BEECHER'S  HOME 

By  Rev.  A.  S.  Walker,  D.D. 

While  a  student  at  Union  Theological  Seminary, 

as  often  as  possible  I  attended  the  mid-week  lecture  at 

Plymouth  Church.     It  so  happened  one  evening  that 

the  topic  was  one  with  which  I  had  had  considerable 

difficulty,   nor   did   Mr.    Beecher's    presentation    of    it 


118  Kenrs  mHar&  JBeccbcr 

leave  the  matter  quite  clear.  This  I  frankl}'-  stated 
to  him  at  the  close  of  the  service,  and  in  his  very 
informal  and  friendly  way  he  took  my  arm  in  his  and 
said  —  as  cordially  as  if  I  had  been  his  own  younger 
brother — "Come  home  with  me  and  we  will  talk  the 
matter  over  by  ourselves." 

Of  course  I  availed  myself  of  his  friendly  offer; 
and  after  a  conference  in  his  study  the  difificulty, 
under  the  illumination  of  his  wonderful  mind,  seemed 
wholly  to  vanish. 

His  father  at  that  time  was  living  with  him  ;  and 
after  our  talk  he  said,  "  Now  I  want  you  to  come  into 
the  parlor  and  meet  my  father."  I  hardly  need  say 
that  I  required  no  urging,  and  I  now  look  back  upon 
that  social  hour  as  one  of  the  brightest  spots  in  my 
student  life.  Both  father  and  son  were  in  their  happi- 
est mood,  and  there  passed  between  them  the  merriest 
banter  imaginable. 

One  of  his  stories  at  his  father's  expense  was  as 
follows.  Turning  to  me  he  said  :  "  Do  you  see  that 
painting  on  the  wall  yonder .''  Well,  I  had  always 
thought  that  my  father's  one  failing  was  a  lack  of 
appreciation  for  fine  art.  His  mind  was  so  given 
up  to  preaching  and  theology  that  there  seemed  little 
liking  for  anything  else.  But  when  I  brought  that 
painting  home  it  attracted  his  attention  immediately. 
He  would  stand  before  it  a  quarter  of  an  hour  at  a 
time.  I  felt  very  greatly  encouraged.  I  was  so  glad 
that  a  taste  for  the  fine  arts  was  really  developing, 
even  though  so  late  in  life.  One  day  as  he  was  stand- 
ing before  it  I  observed  that  he  was  talking  to  himself. 
I  drew  near  very  quietly,  being  curious.      It  seems  that 


an  Bvenfng  Hour  at  me  Home  119 

the  artist  had  endeavored  to  put  a  little  life  into  the 
landscape  by  introducing  in  one  corner  a  hunter  who 
had  just  fired  into  a  flock  of  ducks.  And  my  father 
was  saying  to  himself,  'Well,  that  fellow  has  dropped 
two  of  his  ducks  anyway,  and  there  is  that  third  that 
won't  manage  to  get  far  away  !  '  Then,"  said  Henry 
Ward,  "I  gave  my  father  up  so  far  as  fine  art  was 
concerned.  I  found  that  his  interest  in  the  painting 
was  not  at  all  in  the  art,  but  simply  in  the  hunter, 
the  picture  reminding  him  of  his  own  fondness  for 
hunting." 

"Well,"  said  the  father,  turning  the  joke,  "I  have 
always  found  that  a  minister  who  could  take  good  aim 
with  his  gun  was  likely  to  take  all  the  better  aim  with 
his  sermon.  And  I  want  to  say,  for  the  benefit  of 
this  young  man  here,  that  I  have  often  thought  that 
if  Henry  would  only  take  a  little  better  aim  in  some 
of  his  sermons  and  not  scatter  round  quite  so  much, 
he  would  bring  down  more  birds  !  " 

Then  turning  to  me  more  directly  he  continued  : 
"And  there  is  another  thing  that  I  think  I  will  just 
speak  of  for  the  benefit  of  this  young  man.  I  have 
noticed  that  theological  students  usually  get  married 
as  soon  as  they  are  through  with  their  seminary  course. 
Somehow  the  people  expect  it  and  the  students  them- 
selves don't  need  any  special  urging.  Now  it  will  be 
well  to  be  a  little  careful  as  to  whom  you  shall  marry. 
When  I  was  a  young  man  I  made  up  my  mind  to  two 
things.  First,  that  I  would  never  marry  a  woman  that 
wasn't  better  looking  than  I.  And  I  didn't,  did  I, 
Henry  ?  And  secondly,  that  I  never  would  marry  a 
woman  that  was  worth  any  more  money  than  I.      For 


120  Mcm\>  "MarO  3Beecbcc 

I  remember  a  couple  down  in  Connecticut  who  got 
married  and  the  man  was  worth  two  shillings  and  the 
woman  two  and  six ;  and  the  man  used  to  say  that  his 
wife  was  forever  twitting  him  on  that  odd  sixpence !  " 

And  so  with  mirthful  story  and  pleasant  banter 
the  evening  passed,  and  I  left  Brooklyn  Heights  feel- 
ing that  wealth  of  genius  may  be  so  combined  with 
warmth  of  heart  that  even  those  who  stand  highest 
may  yet  be  sympathetic  and  accessible  to  the  very 
humblest,  and  that  a  true  piety  and  mirth  make  admi- 
rable companions  alike  in  the  oldest  as  in  the  youngest 
heart. 


AN    EX-SLAVE'S    IMPRESSIONS   OF   HENRY 
WARD    BEECHER 

By  Maggie  Porter  Cole 

0>ie  of  the  Orighial  Fisk  Jjibilee  Singers 

I  WAS  a  child,  a  freed  slave  fresh  from  the  South 
and  slavery,  one  of  the  eleven  students  selected  from 
Fisk  University  to  come  North  and  try  by  our  voices 
to  pay  off  a  debt  on  the  institution. 

After  many  and  varied  experiences  we  arrived  in 
New  York  City,  with  permission  from  Mr.  Beecher 
to  sing  at  one  of  his  Friday  evening  meetings. 

I  had  heard  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  as  a  friend 
of  the  negro,  as  a  brother  of  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe,  and  knew  that  these  two  had  played  a  wonder- 
ful part  in  the  emancipation  of  the  slave,  but  in  my 
wildest  dreams  I  had  not  imagined  myself  permitted 
to  sit  at  his  feet  with  others  and  listen  to  wonderful 
words    of  love  and   truth.      So   that   when,   with    my 


Bn  Bx=Slavc'0  IFmpreesions  121 

associates,  I  was  ushered  in  and  seated  in  Plymouth 
Church,  I  do  not  remember  which  moved  me  most, 
the  sight  of  the  great,  kindly-faced  man  who  sat  and 
beamed  upon  us,  or  the  thought  that  we  ivJio  but 
yesterday  zvcre  slaves  were  in  such  a  place  of  worship, 
under  such  conditions,  and  were  to  be  allowed  to  sing 
some  of  our  Southern  songs  here  before  this  great 
man.  However,  Mr.  Beecher's  call  to  come  upon  the 
platform  and  his  reception  set  us  at  our  ease  and 
reminded  me  of  the  charge  Mr.  White  (our  leader) 
had  given  us,  "to  remember  that  everything  hinged 
upon  the  success  of  that  night." 

I  watched  the  emotions  play  upon  Mr.  Beecher's 
face  —  and  there  never  was  a  more  expressive  face -—- 
as  he  listened  to  our  songs,  and  I  knew  the  battle 
was  won. 

We  sang  twenty  minutes,  and  as  we  were  leaving 
the  platform  Mr.  Beecher  jumped  before  us  with 
pocketbook  in  hand  and  told  those  present  he  wished 
they  would  let  their  pockets  as  well  as  their  hearts 
be  touched. 

The  victory  was  ours.  We  had  won  to  our  cause 
the  great-hearted  Henry  Ward  Beecher.  The  New 
York  Herald  thereafter  called  us  "  Mr.  Beecher's 
nigger  minstrels,"  which  served  us  well  as  an 
advertisement. 

Later  on  we  met  Mr.  Beecher  in  New  Haven, 
where  he  and  we  were  billed  for  the  same  evening, 
he  to  lecture  and  we,  of  course,  to  sing.  We  did  not 
know  of  his  lecture  in  time,  or  we  should  never  have 
dared  to  go.  But  luck  was  with  us,  for  so  few  tickets 
were  sold  for  the  lecture  that    it   was   called   off,   and 


122  •Mcmsi  mar^  JBcecber 

we  were  given  a  new  proof  of  the  greatness  of  this 
man.  He  attended  our  concert,  made  a  speech  and 
was  delighted  to  have  these  ex-slave  children  outdraw 
him   in  that  university  town. 

I    thought    him    that    night    the   grandest    man    in 
the  world. 


A   GROUP 

OF    APPRECIATIONS    OF 

MR.    BEECHER 


APPRECIATIONS    OF    MR.    BEECHER 

It  was  my  privilege  to  know  Mr.  Beecher  well,  and  to 
be  associated  with  him  as  only  a  few  others  were  in  some 
of  the  most  critical  periods  of  his  life.  He  spoke  in  my 
church,  and  often  graciously  invited  me  to  supply  his  pulpit, 
both  in  his  presence  and  in  his  absence.  Nearly  if  not 
quite  the  last  lecture  that  he  ever  delivered  was  in  the 
Montclair  church.  I  shall  never  forget  the  walk  to  the 
train  after  that  lecture.  He  said,  "  Let  the  carriage  go,  I 
would  rather  walk,"  and  throwing  his  arm  around  my  neck 
he  walked  and  soliloquized.  The  shadow  of  his  approach- 
ing departure  already  seemed  to  have  touched  him.  He 
said,  "  Just  think  of  it !  I  have  been  pastor  of  Plymouth 
Church  nearly  forty  years,  but  I  shall  not  be  much  longer." 
And  then  he  talked  about  its  future  and  his  love  for  it, 
and  seemed  to  be  like  one  whose  spirit  was  in  some  far- 
distant  land.  One  day  when  we  were  talking  about  his 
difficulties  and  consequent  labors,  he  said,  "  I  will  take 
care  of  the  work  if  you  will  take  care  of  the  worry." 

In  a  conference  concerning  the  composition  of  his  great 
council  an  objection  was  raised  to  the  inviting  of  one  well- 
known  man  because  he  was  supposed  to  have  prejudged  the 
case;  Mr.  Beecher  quickly  said,  "No!  he  is  a  fair  man, 
and  I  will  trust  him,  whatever  his  prejudgments."  I  heard 
him  preach  in  the  midst  of  his  trial.  There  was  not  the 
faintest  reference  to  what  he  was  passing  through.  He 
seemed  to  be  living  in  another  world.  His  text  was,  "  Seek 
ye  first  the  kingdom  of  God,"  etc.  Major  Pond  once  told 
me  of  an  afternoon  ride  with  Mr.  Beecher  over  the  prairies. 
For  an  hour  or  two  he  was  silent  and  absorbed,  when,  just 

12-5 


126  menrg  'WIlar&  JBeecbcr 

as  the  sun  was  setting,  he  turned  toward  the  Major,  put  his 
hand  on  his  knees,  and  said,  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  "  Pond, 
just  think  of  it ;  in  a  little  while  I  shall  see  Jesus  !  "  Major 
Pond  could  not  tell  that  story  with  an  undimmed  eye. 

I  was  too  near  to  Mr.  Beecher  in  my  early  manhood 
to  be  impartial  now.  He  was  more  than  any  other  like  a 
father  in  the  ministry,  often  doing  me  thoughtful  and  un- 
sought favors,  and  he  was  the  same  to  a  host  of  other  young 
ministers.  He  never  forgot  that  he  was  young  once,  and 
the  less  that  any  of  us  were  able  to  do  in  return  the  more 
ungrudging  his  service  to  us.  As  I  think  of  him  now  the 
qualities  of  his  character  which  most  impress  me  were  his 
generosity,  his  fairness,  his  love  for  his  enemies,  and,  strange 
as  it  may  seem,  his  self-control.  His  own  charity  surpassed 
any  that  he  preached.  As  an  orator  he  was  unapproach- 
able, I  have  heard  most  of  the  great  pulpit  orators  of  our 
time  and  language  —  Punshon,  Simpson,  Spurgeon,  Liddon, 
Brooks,  Parker  —  and  not  one  could  be  compared  with  him, 
I  have  seen  great  audiences  bow  before  his  eloquence  as  a 
field  of  wheat  goes  down  before  the  west  wind. 

As  a  preacher,  in  his  combination  of  philosophic  insight, 
spiritual  vision  and  power  of  persuasion,  he  was  without  a 
peer,  I  do  not  think  he  was  an  original  thinker;  he  had 
no  time  for  original  work.  But  he  absorbed  that  which  was 
best  and  most  vital  in  the  works  of  the  original  thinkers, 
and  in  a  true  and  noble  sense  became  their  interpreter,  and 
also  an  inspirer  of  thought  as  well  as  a  molder  of  life.  I 
do  not  compare  him  with  any  other  man  whom  our  country 
has  produced,  because  he  belongs  in  a  class  by  himself. 
The  years  are  already  driving  away  the  clouds  from  his 
memory.  As  an  orator,  a  preacher,  a  patriot  and  a  Chris- 
tian, I  believe  that  his  name  will  endure  as  one  of  the  most 
precious  possessions  of  the  American  people. 

Amory  H.  Bradford. 
Montiiair,  New  Jersey. 


Bpprccfatlona  127 

I  KNEW  Mr.  Beecher  as  a  preacher  and  as  an  orator,  espe- 
cially upon  political  and  economic  subjects.  I  was  reared 
in  the  Episcopal  Church  and  amongst  old-time  Democratic 
surroundings.  Before  I  had  heard  or  seen  Mr.  Beecher  I 
was  rather  prejudiced  against  him.  Curiosity  first  prompted 
me,  as  a  very  young  man,  to  visit  Plymouth  Church.  I 
entered  with  doubt  and  misgiving.  I  left,  a  disciple  and  a 
follower. 

The  crowds  which  went  to  hear  him,  notably  during  the 
period  of  excitement  attendant  upon  the  dark  days  of  the 
great  trial,  often  made  it  difficult  to  secure  a  seat  or  even 
to  gain  access  to  the  building.  I  frequently  sat  upon  the 
steps  leading  to  the  platform  upon  which  he  stood.  Though 
inconvenient,  my  seat  gave  me  the  opportunity  of  hearing 
every  word  and  of  observing  every  change  of  expression  in 
his  wonderfully  mobile  countenance.  Mr.  Beecher  was  as 
much  an  actor  as  a  preacher.  Unconsciously  every  spoken 
sentence  was  reflected  in  action.  His  mouth  was  singularly 
expressive,  and  his  full  eye  lighted  with  joy,  flashed  with 
indignation,  or  became  suffused  with  tears,  according  to  the 
varying  moods  of  his  marvelous  oratory.  I  do  not  believe 
that  there  ever  was  another  man  possessing  so  large  a  share 
of  originality  as  a  speaker.  Furthermore,  if  there  ever  was 
an  impromptu  orator  Beecher  was  that  man. 

But  the  man  himself  was  much  more  than  his  genius 
in  moving  audiences.  Every  one  can  trace  much  of  his 
mental  and  moral  make-up  to  original  impulses  derived  from 
contact  with  great  souls,  in  his  family,  his  school,  or  col- 
lege—  amongst  his  teachers  or  even  amongst  strangers. 
Thus  Mr.  Beecher,  years  before  I  knew  him,  moved  me  in 
many  ways. 

He  was  one  of  the  few  men  whom  I  have  met  whose 
reputation  of  greatness  did  not  suffer  by  personal  contact. 
He  carried  about  him  the  atmosphere  of  a  great  man  — 
something  which   cannot    be    defined,  but    only    felt.      He 


1^8  mennj  WarO  .fGcecbcr 

taught  me  to  throw  off  the  bonds  of  traditional  or  conven- 
tional thinking,  and  to  think  as  a  free  man.  Then  how  new 
and  beautiful  appeared  to  me  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ! 

He  had  the  courage  of  his  convictions  in  religion,  eco- 
nomics and  in  politics  —  and  he  made  other  men  as  brave 
as  himself.  In  the  prime  of  life,  he  fought  the  battle  for 
free  men.  When  the  shadows  were  lengthening,  with  the 
resilience  of  youth,  he  began  a  battle  for  free  trade  —  to 
restore  to  commerce  the  conditions  designed  by  the  Creator. 
When  asked  as  to  whether  he  would  like  to  live  his  long 
life  over  again,  he  answered  that  he  would  not,  but  added, 
in  substance,  "  I  should  like  to  live  long  enough  to  induce 
the  American  people  to  favor  the  unshackling  of  intercourse 
between  nation  and  nation." 

It  was  my  privilege  to  be  the  first  secretary  of  the  Reve- 
nue Reform  Club  of  Brooklyn,  of  which  Mr.  Beecher  was 
first  president,  and  which,  under  his  leadership,  soon  gained 
a  national  reputation.  I  came  in  frequent  contact  with  him 
then,  and  many  a  time  heard  him  speak  after  such  masters 
of  accurate  and  logical  statement  as  David  A.  Wells  and 
Prof.  William  G.  Sumner,  using  largely  their  material.  But 
how  different  it  all  seemed  when  transmuted  into  humor  and 
satire,  into  fancy  and  imagery  ! 

Mr.  Beecher  never  could  handle  figures  correctly,  but 
he  nevertheless  saw  the  philosophy  and  poetry  which  un- 
derlay mathematics,  and  even  the  dryest  statistics.  Men 
like  Mr.  Wells  instructed  —  but  Beecher  awakened  the  emo- 
tions which  led  to  action.  I  owe  no  man  a  larger  debt  of 
gratitude,  mainly,  as  I  have  intimated,  because  he  taught 
me  to  stand  for  what  I  believe  to  be  right,  and  having 
done  all,  still  to  stand. 

It  was  my  pleasure  to  suggest  and  to  contribute  to  the 
raising  of  the  statue  of  Mr.  Beecher  which  stands  in  the 
busiest  center  of  Brooklyn.  When  Dr.  Hillis,  on  New 
Year's  Day  last,  suggested   a  further  memorial  to  his  dis- 


Bcccncr  ^UUU' 


.,  City  Ildll,  /.''v..:.V'V,  -V.  ]' 


Beecher  Memorial  Church,  Brooklyn, 
N.  v.,  toward  the  construction  of  luhich 
7noney  was  received  from  every  state  and 
territory  in  this  country,  from  Canada, 
Scotland,  England,  Wales,  Sweden,  Den- 
mark,   South    America,    China    and  India. 


130  Henry  marO  JBeccber 

tinguished  predecessor  —  I  felt  it  a  pleasure  to  cooperate. 
All  who  owe  a  debt  to  one  of  the  greatest  men  of  our  time 
should,  by  their  generous  contributions,  see  to  it  that  the 
Memorial  worthily  calls  to  mind  the  life-work  of  Henry 
Ward  Beecher. 

Fred  W.  Hinrichs. 
Brooklyn,  Netu    York. 

I  AM  hardly  to  be  counted  among  those  who  are  entitled 
to  speak  from  a  personal  knowledge  of  Mr.  Beecher.  I 
knew  him  with  an  affectionate  admiration,  but  can  only 
claim  that  intimacy  of  acquaintance  with  him  which  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  all  contact  with  him  was  intimate.  So 
much  I  ought  to  say  if  I  venture  to  comment  at  all  upon 
his  character.  I  would  not  undertake  to  pronounce  an  opin- 
ion upon  the  weight  and  scope  of  his  intellectual  powers;  I 
was  always  too  eager  a  learner  from  him  to  think  of  measur- 
ing his  spiritual  dimensions.  I  can  only  testify  that  my 
contact  with  him  —  without  the  slightest  knowledge  of  the 
fact  on  his  part,  I  feel  sure  —  reshaped  my  life  when  I  had 
reached  years  where  not  many  lives  are  reshaped.  I  think 
those  who  knew  him  best  will  testify  that  he  unconsciously 
exercised  this  influence  upon  an  amazing  number  of  men. 

Whatever  his  genius  was,  I  shall  presume  no  further 
than  to  name  three  obvious  characteristics  which  combined 
to  give  that  genius  its  fullest  potency  upon  the  vast  numbers 
of  men  whom  he  reached  by  his  voice  or  with  his  pen : 
First,  his  faultless  and  splendid  courage,  a  three-fold  cour- 
age of  body,  mind  and  heart,  always  perfectly  balanced 
with  a  spontaneous  and  absolutely  unostentatious  magna- 
nimity ;  next,  the  great  dignity  of  his  inmost  spirit,  joined 
with  a  mirthful  —  a  boyish  —  carelessness  for  outward  sem- 
blances ;  and  last,  the  yearning  tenderness,  the  profundity 
and  the  catholicity  of  his  affections. 

G.  W.  Cable. 
NortJia mpton ,  Massach ti setts. 


appreciations  131 

I  ALWAYS  loved  Mr.  Beecher.  Once  when  I  was  in 
great  need  of  sympathy  Mr.  Beecher  met  me  in  Brooklyn 
on  the  street.  He  stopped,  took  my  hand  in  both  of  his 
and  expressed  his  warm  regard  for  me,  and  encouraged  me 
more  than  I  can  express  by  an  inspiration  not  only  from 
his  words,  but  from  the  soul  that  appeared  in  his  face  and 
in  all  his  framework. 

I  never  went  to  hear  him  speak  —  and  I  went  many 
times  —  that  I  did  not  come  away  with  the  expression, 
"  What  a  manly  man  !  "  One  of  the  first  sermons  that  I 
heard  from  his  lips  after  graduating  from  West  Point,  when 
I  was  on  my  way  to  an  active  campaign  in  Florida,  was 
delivered  in  Plymouth  Church,  Brooklyn.  Just  before  its 
close  he  brought  his  hand  down  upon  the  large  Bible  and 
said  in  substance,  "  I  believe  the  teachings  of  that  Book 
with  all  my  heart."  His  attitude,  his  gesture  and  the  tones 
of  his  voice  impressed  me  in  a  way  I  could  not  forget.  Of 
course  I  am  but  one  of  the  multitude  who  were  influenced 
by  him  to  treasure  up  the  words  of  eternal  life. 

In  deed  and  in  truth  Henry  Ward  Beecher  was  a  man 
like  David,  inspired  by  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord,  and  a 
man  fearless  in  the  proclamation  of  truth,  but  always  in 
accordance  with  the  great  Master's  own  spirit. 

Oliver  Otis  Howard. 

Burlington ,   Vennont. 

It  was  my  privilege  to  see  Mr.  Beecher  many  times, 
to  have  much  pleasant  talk  with  him,  to  hear  him  many 
times  and  on  some  great  occasions ;  but  I  heard  him 
preach  only  a  few  times.  One  of  these  puts  out  the 
light  of  all  the  others  with  its  supreme  magnificence. 
I  think  it  must  have  been  the  best  sermon  that  he  ever 
preached.  It  was  on  the  "  Voice  of  God."  It  was  as 
transcendental  as  Emerson.  The  doctrine  was  that  the 
perpetual  revelation    is    independent  of    all    special   revela- 


132  Menn^  ^UlarS  JSeecber 

tions;  that  without  Bible,  Christ  or  Church  the  voice  of 
God  would  have  made  itself  heard  in  all  lands  and  times. 
This  doctrine  was  quite  other  than  that  of  the  deliberate 
agnosticism  of  his  famous,  "  Can  Theodore  Parker  Worship 
My  God  ? "  with  the  answer  that  he  (Beecher)  knew  no  God 
but  Christ.  It  was  the  deliberate  agnosticism  of  this  doc- 
trine that  made  Herbert  Spencer's  doctrine  of  the  Unknow- 
able so  attractive  to  him.  But  a  happy  inconsistency  saved 
him  from  the  habitual  expression  of  his  deliberate  theology. 
His  heart  was  wiser  than  his  head,  and  the  language  of 
that  was  the  language  of  his  sermon  on  the  "  Voice  of  God," 
not  that  of  his  theological  contention  that,  except  for  Christ, 
we  are  without  God  in  the  world. 

The  poetry  and  humor  of  the  man  were  for  me  his  most 
remarkable  traits.  A  good  judge  of  these  things  once  said 
to  me,  "  Beecher  has  said  more  Shakespearean  things  than 
any  one  since  Shakespeare."  I  think  not,  yet  I  should 
hardly  know  where  to  turn  for  one  exceeding  him.  It  is 
because  these  things  do  not  inhere  in  a  meditated  body 
of  thought  that  he  is  not  now  more  widely  read.  He  had 
the  fatal  gift  of  spontaneity  —  fatal  to  his  literary  perma- 
nence. He  exerts  his  influence  not  through  the  medium 
of  his  writings,  but  through  thousands  of  men  and  women 
who  do  not  generally  know  whence  they  derive  their  help. 
He  is  "  the  sweet  presence  of  a  good  diffused,"  by  those 
who  caught  their  inspiration  from  his  living  lips  and  from 
his  writings  when  they  were  hot  with  the  pulsation  of  his 
mighty  heart. 

His  preaching  was  a  dissolving  agent,  acting  with  im- 
mense force  on  the  Calvinism  which  was  dominant  when 
he  began  to  preach.  I  think  he  did  not  so  much  see  "  the 
glory  of  God  in  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ "  as  he  saw  the 
humanity  of  Jesus  in  the  face  of  God.  Perhaps  this  was 
not  sound  theology,  but  it  presented  a  human  ideal  of  en- 
trancing beauty,   and    the    ideals    men  honor  are   dynamic 


Appreciations  133 

forces  in  their  lives.  Henry  Ward  Beecher's  Jesus  was  a 
great  improvement  upon  Calvin's  God,  much  more  con- 
straining to  all  noble  things. 

John  White  Chadwick. 
Brooklvn,  New  York. 


I  REMEMBER  in  Mr.  Beecher's  preaching  a  wonderful 
vitality  which  made  the  truths  of  religion  in  his  handling 
to  be  felt  as  matters  of  near  and  immediate  interest. 
Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning,  writing  of  her  husband's 
earlier  volume,   "  Bells   and    Pomegranates,"  says : 

Or  of  Browning,  some  pomegranate  which,  if  cut  deep  down 

the  middle. 
Shows  a  heart  within  blood-tinctured  of  a  veined  humanity. 

These  lines  express  for  me  the  impression  of  Mr. 
Beecher's  personality  which  I  derived  from  his  sermons. 
I  had  heard  him  from  time  to  time  before  the  Civil  War, 
always  with  great  pleasure  and  interest,  but  I  must  think 
that  the  inspiration  of  that  great  contest  brought  out  in 
him  a  new  power  and  fervor.  Preachers  often  impress  us 
with  their  remoteness  from  our  common  human  life.  In 
their  sermons  we  seem  to  smell  the  very  leather  of  the 
volumes  which  are  their  daily  and  hourly  companions. 
Mr.  Beecher  spoke  to  us  from  the  heart  of  the  life  of  his 
own  time,  interpreting  to  us  its  duties  and  its  lessons. 

Never  shall  I  forget  one  occasion  early  in  the  Civil  War 
when  I  found  a  seat  in  one  of  the  crowded  pews  of  a  con- 
gregation waiting  and  eager  to  hear  him.  His  discourse 
was  so  uplifting  and  inspiring  in  its  character  that  it  seemed 
to  find  a  fit  culmination  in  the  hymn  that  followed  its  close  : 

We  are  living,  we  are  dwelling, 

In  a  strange  and  awful  time, 
In  an  age  on  ages  telling, — 

To  be  living  is  sublime. 

I  recall  another  Sunday  in   the    days  in  which  an  out- 


134  Kcnrg  marD  JBeecber 

rageous  scandal  which  assailed  Mr,  Beecher  was  at  its 
height.  I  happened  to  be  visiting  at  the  house  of  a  friend 
who  did  not  feel  the  assurance  which  I  felt  of  the  infamous 
falsehood  of  the  charges  preferred  against  the  great  teacher. 
In  spite  of  her  earnest  persuasion  I  took  my  way  to  Plym- 
outh Church  to  attend  its  morning  service.  I  must  confess 
that  I  did  this  with  some  trouble  of  mind,  saying  to  myself, 
"  If  there  is  any  truth  in  these  charges,  I  shall  feel  it  in  the 
insincerity  which  will  naturally  show  itself  in  the  utterances 
of  the  preacher."  As  I  entered  the  church  a  heavenly  calm 
seemed  to  rest  upon  the  congregation.  The  splendid  choir 
began  Mendelssohn's  beautiful  chorus  : 

He,  watching  over  Israel, 
Slumbers  not,  nor  sleeps. 

I  waited  with  some  anxiety  for  the  first  words  of  the  pastor's 
prayer.  In  them  I  found  the  same  calm,  the  same  uplifting 
trust  in  the  divine  Guardian.  My  thought  was,  "This  man 
stands  in  the  innermost  refuge  of  the  Just;  the  citadel  of 
a  conscience  -void  of  ofifense  against  God  or  man." 

I  remember  a  word  of  Mr.  Beecher's  which  I  chanced 
to  hear  in  what  were  to  me  rather  heedless  days.  It  was 
to  the  following  effect:  "Do  not  suppose  that  at  a  time 
when  you  may  keenly  feel  the  need  of  religious  comfort 
and  help  you  will  be  able  to  command  them  as  one  orders 
a  suit  of  clothes  from  a  tailor."  This  homely  simile  so 
impressed  me  that  I  have  carried  it  with  me  ever  since. 
Not  very  long  after  my  hearing  it  a  severe  family  affliction 
brought  it  vividly  to  my  mind,  from  which  the  lesson  in- 
tended has  never  vanished. 

From  time  to  time  Mr.  Beecher  used  to  come  to  Boston 
in  order  to  fulfill  some  lecture  engagement.  On  one  of 
these  occasions  a  lady  friend,  meeting  me  in  the  street, 
said :  "  Mr.  Beecher  has  come  to  town  to-day,  and  I  cannot 
well  entertain  him.  Do  you  think  of  any  one  who  would 
like  to  invite  him  to  dinner  ?  "  —  the  hour  of  which  in  those 


appreciations  135 

days  was  two  o'clock.  I  replied  that  I  should  be  most 
happy  to  receive  him  at  my  house.  Hastening  to  invite  a 
friend  to  meet  him,  I  prefaced  my  invitation  with  these 
words,  "  The  sun  is  going  to  rise  in  my  parlor  to-day  — 
Henry  Ward  Beecher  is  coming  to  dine  with  me."  This 
friend  was  Mary  Booth,  the  charming  wife  of  the  great  trage- 
dian, Edwin  Booth.  When,  not  long  afterwards,  Mrs.  Booth 
was  stricken  with  sudden  and  fatal  disease,  Mr.  Beecher 
wrote  to  her  husband  a  very  kind  and  consoling  letter. 

What  I  have  here  written  only  seems  to  me  to  show 
that  words  can  but  partially  express  the  charm  and  power 
of  those  unique  personalities  which  illuminate  the  world  of 
their  time,  and,  passing,  leave  behind  them  a  track  of  light 
which  bears  witness  to  what  they  did,  but  cannot  recall  what 

they  were. 

Julia  Ward  Howe. 
Boston,  Massachusetts. 

The  charm  of  Channing  was  profound  and  indescribable. 
But  Henry  Ward  Beecher  recalls  Whitefield  more  than  any 
other  renowned  preacher.  Like  Whitefield,  he  was  what  is 
known  as  a  man  of  the  people;  a  man  of  strong  virility, 
of  exuberant  vitality,  of  quick  sympathy,  of  an  abounding 
humor,  of  a  rapid  play  of  poetic  imagination,  of  great 
fluency  of  speech;  an  emotional  nature  overflowing  in 
ardent  expression,  of  strong  convictions,  of  complete  self- 
confidence  ;  but  also  not  sensitive,  nor  critical,  nor  judicial ; 
a  hearty,  joyous  nature,  touching  ordinary  human  life  at 
every  point,  and  responsive  to  every  generous  moral  impulse. 

George  William  Curtis. 

Mr.   Beecher    was    as   genuine    an    American    as    ever 

walked  through  a  field  of  Indian   corn.     He   had  not  the 

fine  fiber  of   the  scholastic  thoroughbred,  but  he   had   the 

hearty  manhood  of  Lincoln. 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 


^ 


